FILE PHOTO
Tommy O’Neil and the Eagles stormed by English for their ninth win of the season.
By STEVE KRAUSE
DANVERS — These are not easy times for the English boys basketball team.
However, there are still games to play, and the Bulldogs are doing their best to maintain their poise and composure in the wake of some rather turbulent times over on Goodridge Street.
The Bulldogs stumbled Wednesday night at St. John’s Prep, however. Between the tribulations they’ve endured over the past week, and the fact that The Prep has had a couple of tough losses to digest recently, it wasn’t surprising they’d come out on the short end of a game between the two teams. What was surprising, perhaps, was how badly the Bulldogs were outplayed.
The final score was 82-48, and it was every bit of an indication as to how the game went.
“It was a tough one,” said Steve Stranahan, who is still acting coach in the wake of Mike Carr’s illness, which has required hospitalization. “It didn’t look like as if we came ready to play tonight.”
St. John’s (9-3) has had a rocky stretch lately. The Eagles suffered back-to-back close losses to Xaverian and BC High before recovering with a win over Malden Catholic on Monday night. The loss to Xaverian, which had won only once this season prior to its game against St. John’s, was particularly nettlesome to coach Jack Dullea.
“But it shows how tough our league (Catholic Conference) is,” said Dullea. “From top to bottom, I think it’s the toughest around.”
Therefore, Dullea said, the Eagles were anxious to get off the schneid and put a good game together.
“We came out very aggressive, and with a lot of confidence and it showed,” Dullea said. “We had a distinct height advantage over them, and we put it to good use.”
That was especially true in the first part of the game, as the Eagles raced out to a 23-11 lead after a quarter.
Toward the end of the period, English came out of a timeout with a changed defense that was set up not to let the Prep’s tall players — particularly Tommy O’Neil and Brett McNiff — get easy baskets.
It worked. But all that meant was that Nate Hobbs (game-high 23 points) could start bombing away from the outside. At the start of the second quarter, he hit three straight 3-pointers, after which the score was 32-13 and, for all intents and purposes, the game was over.
By halftime, it was 49-25, and the second half was left to backups from both teams to finish things out.
“I think,” said Stranahan, “you have to take a look at what we’ve been fighting over the past couple of weeks. And St. John’s is one of the top teams around. Tonight, we just came up against a better team.”
O’Neil, with 19 points, was the only other Eagle in double figures, though Matt Relihan had nine. In all, 10 Eagles found their way onto the scoresheet.
For English, Javonte Edwards and Ivy Lopes had 10 points each, followed by Tommy Rijo with nine.
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].
