LYNN — This one almost got away from the English boys basketball team.
But the key word is “almost.” It didn’t get away from the Bulldogs.
It’s not that it couldn’t have. The Malden Catholic boys basketball team took a 26-point deficit late in the second half and had it whitted down to six by the fourth quarter. But the Bulldogs reasserted themselves in the last five minutes Friday night at Cavanagh Fieldhouse and won 80-65 for their fourth straight victory of the season.
“We didn’t stick to our principles when we got up big,” said first-year coach Antonio Anderson. “We let up, and got too comfortable, and tried to show off.
“You do that against a better team, and you’re going to lose a game like this,” Anderson said.
The first quarter was a tour de force of English everything: layups, dunks, 3-point shooting, defense … it all came together like a well-oiled machine. After Alonzo Linton of English and Matt Amendola of the Lancers swapped baskets in the first minute, English went off on one of many first-half runs — this one a 15-0 spurt to make the score 17-2. After one quarter, it was 23-9.
English showed no signs of slowing down either. The Bulldogs had the lead up to 21 (34-15) by the midway point of the second quarter, and after Malden Catholic’s 5-0 run made it 36-30, the Bulldogs closed out the period with a 10-2 spurt to go into the locker room up by 24 (46-22).
“They were up on us by 26 (46-20) right before the end of the half, but even so, I thought we started playing more competitively late in the second quarter,” said Malden Catholic coach Jim McCune. “I thought we learned a few things about ourselves that’ll serve us well later in the season.”
The Lancers kept plugging away. They closed the gap in the third quarter from 24 down to 13, and trailed, 60-47, after three.
Anderson feels it was lack of discipline and court awareness that allowed Malden Catholic to climb back into the game. For one thing, it tried too hard to push the ball up and score during times when it should have been trying to slow things down.
“Scoring is not a problem for us,” he said. “But we have to make plays. We made a lot of mistakes, and they cost us. Malden Catholic hit three after three after three, and we didn’t react well to it.”
While MC had the hot hand with the three-pointer after the cold start (the Lancers finished with nine of them), Chris MacDonald went on a binge of them early in the fourth quarter, popping home three of them, the last of which got a once seemingly insurmountable 26-point lead down to six (66-60) with five minutes to go.
However, that’s when the bell seemed to sound in the minds of the Bulldogs. Linton (game-high 20 points) hit a thunderous dunk off a steal, and the Bulldogs were never in danger of losing again. In no time, Linton, Javaris Hill (six out of his 17 points during the surge) and Javonte Edwards (13 points) had the lead back up to 17 (70-62) with 2:24 to go, and that was the ballgame.
“We have to teach our kids how to be relentless,” said Anderson. “We preach it to them on a daily basis. Be relentless.”
Calvin Seng (11 points) also scored in double figures for English. MacDonald (16) and Christian Rios (12) were high scorers for the Lancers (0-4).
English is in action Wednesday against St. Mary’s in the opener of the Boverini basketball tournament at Lynn Classical.
