Marblehead boys basketball beats Marbleheadl for fourth straight time

SWAMPSCOTT ? Times used to be when the Swampscott High boys basketball team used to beat Marblehead by just showing up.Times have changed.The Magicians (6-1) defeated their next-door neighbors for the fourth straight time with a 56-44 win over the Big Blue (3-2), Friday night, at Swampscott High.Brandon Lee led Marblehead with 16 points, while Taariq Allen was right behind with 15 points. Doug Rodenstein paced Swampscott with 14 points, while Mike Nimkar added 10.”These things run in cycles,” Swampscott coach Paul Moran said. “We’re a young team and we’re still learning. Marblehead is a very good team and they showed that tonight.”The Magicians had a lead of as much as 21 points in the final minute of the second quarter, but Swampscott fought back to close within six a few times, the last with 4:24 left in the game. But Allen came up with two big plays in the span of 25 seconds – a running layup, and then a steal and an assist to Lee for a bucket that bumped the lead back up to double-digits.Swampscott got no closer than nine points the rest of the way.”We’re happy with the win, but we didn’t play with the same intensity in the second half that we played with in the first,” Marblehead coach Wayne Hanscom said.Marblehead’s suffocating 1-3-1 zone defense kept Swampscott off the scoreboard for the first 4:12 of the game, by which time the Magicians built a 9-0 lead behind a couple of hoops by Ian McKinley. McKinley nailed a 3-pointer from the right elbow with 2:47 left in the opening quarter to give Marblehead its first double-digit lead of the game at 12-2.Swampscott closed to five (14-9) when Frank Barba and Peter Yasi opened the second quarter with back-to-back hoops, but the Big Blue went scoreless for the next 6:02 while the Magicians reeled off 16 straight points to take a 30-9 lead.Barba made a layup and Brian Sullivan converted a steal just before the buzzer to make the score 30-13 at halftime.Swampscott needed to make a run in the second half and got it behind the hot hand of Rodenstein, who scored eight straight points to close out a 13-2 spurt that made the score 34-26. Lee scored all of his team’s six points in the remainder of the third quarter, which ended with the Magicians’ holding an unpredictably precarious 10-point lead at 40-30.A 3-pointer from the top of the key by Swampscott’s Steve Moran cut the lead to six for the first time, and when Nimkar made another three with 5:57 left, it looked like the the Big Blue might be headed all the way back.Marblehead turned the defense back up at that point, even switching to man-to-man briefly as Swampscott went on another scoring drought down the stretch. Allen put back a miss with 1:49 left to make the score 54-40 with 1:45 left.”We knew what they were going to throw at us (defensively) and we worked on it,” Moran said. “Taariq Allen really makes them go. He runs the floor, he gets in the passing lanes and he rebounds. He can move to Swampscott any time he wants.”That’s not likely to happen, not as long as the Magicians are enjoying their recent dominance of their rivals from Swampscott.