English holds off Classical in Boverini boys’ final

LYNN ? The Lynn English boys’ basketball team can be absolutely devastating when it is functioning at full speed.
Saturday in the championship game of the Walter J. Boverini Tournament at Lynn Tech?s T. O’Connor gym, the Bulldogs had everything working at times but also had to stave off a serious push from Lynn Classical.
The Rams refused to go away when English, time and again, opened up a double-digit lead. But the Bulldogs eventually were able to hit clutch shots down the stretch and, led by 25 points from tourney MVP Erick Rosario, beat Classical, 83-72.
?Anytime we play Classical it’s a war,” said English coach Mike Carr. “Tommy (Grassa) does a great job and they did a great job of coming back every time we got up double figures. But (winning this tournament) is always one of our goals and we were able to do that.”
Classical (2-4) was more than up to the challenge of facing the Bulldogs for the second time in five days thanks to the brilliance of junior swingman C.J. Lights, who scored 21 of his game-high 28 points in the second half. The problem for the Rams was that they had to dig their way out of a huge halftime deficit thanks to a devastating three-minute run by English to cap the second quarter.
The Rams had the ball, down one, and turned it over. By the time the buzzer had sounded to end the half, English had raced out to a 44-28 halftime lead.
?That one stretch there really hurt us,” Grassa said. “We had some bad turnovers and didn’t finish off some possessions.”
Classical came out of the locker room on fire to begin the third quarter as Lights, Phil Rogers (12 points) and Peter Mafo (16 points) keyed a 12-4 run that trimmed English’s lead to 48-41 and led to a fire-and-brimstone timeout speech from Carr.
Rosario heeded Carr’s words as he ripped into the lane for back-to-back baskets to restore an 11-point lead. Lights and Mafo, however, wouldn’t let English blow the game open like at the end of the first half,
Mafo scored 10 in the third quarter while Lights added 11 as Classical clawed its way back to within eight at 59-51 at the end of the third.
?C.J. was outstanding,” Carr said. “There was a point there where he put his head down and was going to make sure we didn’t beat them. He did a great job.”
The Bulldogs (5-0) had a response at the outset of the fourth. First, it was Johnny Hilaire scoring in the paint before Rosario, Stevie Collins (20 points) and Anthony Silfa (15 points) began to assert themselves.
Rosario knifed to the bucket for two before Collins’ conventional three-point play pushed the English lead to 66-51 with 6:10 to go. Classical, however, wasn’t ready to go quietly as the Rams answered with a 10-2 run that cut the lead to 68-61 with just under four minutes left.
After the teams traded twos, Collins delivered the knockout punch when he buried a 25-footer from the left wing for a trey that upped the lead to 73-63. The Rams got the lead back to eight on Lights? long-range bomb. But that was as close as Classical got as English scored the next five points to put the game out of reach.
?If we can play like I know we can for 32 minutes, we’re going to be a tough team to beat,” Carr said.
In the consolation game, St. Mary’s (4-1) shook off the emotions of a heartbreaking loss to English in overtime in the first round along with the loss of junior Joe Fama to a broken leg late in regulation in that game by rolling past Tech, 64-36.
?The kids wanted to come out here and win this one for Joe,” Spartans coach David Brown said. “We needed to get over all of the emotion (from Friday) and play a good game.”
It didn’t hurt that Dennis Bailer was once again lights-out at the offensive end as he scored a game-high 20 points, including three three-pointers, to lead a St. Mary’s attack that saw nine different players score.The Spartans got out of the gates fast, scoring the game’s first nine points and never looking back. Jalen Echevarria and Cooper Robbins-Lentz added eight points each as a