Connaughton leads Prep past Charlestown

DANVERS ? It wasn’t total joyride, but the wagon that is the St. John’s Prep basketball team kept rolling with a 76-60 win over Charlestown, Friday, at Memorial Gym.Patrick Connaughton led all scorers with 30 points, while Stephen Haladyna added 21 for the Eagles, who improved to 15-0. Freshman Ramon Gibbons led a young and improving Charlestown team (9-6) with 23 points. The Townies started three freshmen and a sophomore last night.On Dec. 19, St. John’s blasted the Townies by 24 points. On Friday, Charlestown led at halftime and trailed by just three points with 5:37 left in the game before the Eagles went on a 10-0 in a span of two minutes to put the game away.”We knew this game would be tougher than the last one we played against them,” St. John’s coach Sean Connolly said. “They beat (highly-regarded) Boston English the other night and they’re playing very well.”The Townies really had no anwser for Connaughton, who also had 16 rebounds and six assists, and ran the point at times when Charlestown tried to press.”He’s athletic, and he’s very hard to defend,” Charlestown coach Edson Cardso said. “He’s an All-American in my book.”Gibbons hit a foul line jumper with 5:54 to go to cut St. John’s lead to 57-54, and Connolly called timeout. After that, the Eagles took the ball to the basket and got five straight layups, the last of which was from Haladyna on an in-bounds play.”We were relying on our outside shooting too much,” Connolly said. “I told the kids to take the ball inside, and we got some good looks.”Connaughton took over from there, scoring the last nine points for the Eagles, inclding a 25-foot bomb from the left elbow with 46.1 seconds left that gave St. John’s its largest lead of the game at 76-58.”Once they started taking less jump shots, it made them harder to defend,” Cardso said.Haladyna and Mackenzie Burt combined for 14 points in the first six minutes of the game as St. John’s took an early 18-4 lead. The Townies closed the gap to 10 by the end of the first quarter, and made it all the way back to 29-29 when Gibbons made a 10-footer with 1:49 left in the half.Omar Orrioles canned a 3-pointer from the left wing with 22 seconds remaining in the second quarter and Charlestown took a surprising 34-31 lead at halftime. St. John’s scored just seven points on one field goal and four free throws in the second quarter.Connaughton opened the scoring in the second half with an alley-oop dunk on a pass from Conor Macomber and then Michael Carbone made a 3-pointer from the right wing to give the lead back to St. John’s.The Eagles’ lead hovered between two and six points for most of the third quarter until Akosa Maduegbunam made a 3-pointer from the right elbow with 2:21 left to tie the game at 49-49, before Connaughton closed out the period with a couple of layups, including a put-back that just beat the buzzer.