English, Stanton dominate Classical boys

LYNN ? Statistics don’t always tell the story about a game, but there’s one stat that will haunt the Lynn Classical boys basketball team in the wake of its 82-68 loss to English, Friday night, at Classical.The Rams (13-9) shot just 12-for-30 from the foul line, in an otherwise competitive performance with the Northeastern Conference champs (17-1).”That was the ballgame right there,” said Classical coach Tom Grassa.Keandre Stanton had a dominant performance at both ends of the floor, leading English with 23 points, while Travonne Berry-Rogers added 19. Three other Bulldogs ? Fernando Rijo (14), Josh Castillo (14) and Corey McMillen (10) ? also scored in double figures.”They’re talented,” said Grassa. “I don’t think Stanton missed a shot tonight.”Keith Nance led the Rams with 16 points, while Nick Grassa added 14. Despite being plagued by foul trouble, Shaddai Pena scored 10 points.English didn’t trail after the game was two minutes old, and led by as many as 20 early in the third quarter. Classical hung around, but the Rams never got closer than 12 in the second half, though, mostly because they were 7-for-23 from the foul line after the break.”I thought we played well and did an excellent job of controlling the tempo,” said English coach Buzzy Barton. “Hats of to Classical. They played hard.”Indeed, Classical’s points came a lot tougher than English’s. Especially in the first half, English was able to run its fast break and convert, and when the Bulldogs ran a half-court set, they relied on Berry-Rogers, who was almost unstoppable, especially after Pena picked up his second foul just 1:36 into the game. Pena also spent a big chunk of the second and third quarters on the bench with foul trouble and really never got into the flow of the game.Meanwhile, English’s guards harassed the ball, and anyone who got by had to deal with Stanton and McMillen down low.”I don’t know how many blocks (Stanton) had tonight; probably about a dozen,” said Barton.”The last time we played them, we had 29 turnovers, and tonight I thought we did a much better job of protecting the ball,” said coach Grassa. “We’ve been rebounding with big teams, and the first two times we played them, we did a mich better job on the glass. I’ll bet they had more offensive rebounds tonight than we had defensive rebounds.”