LOWELL — If there’s one thing this St. Mary’s boys basketball team has stressed, it’s that this season the Spartans are more of a team than ever.
All five starters along with some key contributors off the bench have the potential to put up big numbers and help the lead St. Mary’s to a victory on any given night. For senior Lee Pacheco, it’s one of the biggest reasons why the Spartans have had some much success this year.
“This year we’re more like a team,” Pacheco said. “Last year we had a lot of star players and this year one through five we can all average double-doubles and score more than 10 points each. Last year it was usually one guy having maybe 35 and the next kid had 15 and it just went down like that. This year we’ve definitely passed the ball around more.”
Pacheco, a forward, sees his role in the mix pretty simply; get into the post and grab rebounds while St. Mary’s shooters like Joey Abate-Walsh, Sammy Batista and Joshua Perez go to work.
“My role is mainly to rebound,” Pacheco said. “Joey shoots, I get the rebounds then I can try to put them back up or dish it out to other players to shoot again.”
But in Saturday’s Division 3 North final Pacheco did a lot more than that, becoming the go-to man in the first quarter and the catalyst for the Spartans 63-40 rout of Weston at the Tsongas Center.
Weston forward Sawyer Mayhugh may have towered over him, but Pacheco didn’t seem to care much, attacking the basket and going on runs of six-straight and five-straight points in the first quarter alone. When the dust settled Pacheco’s 11 points in the first had helped St. Mary’s go ahead 23-4 lead in the first eight minutes.
“We knew that (Mayhugh) was overpowering other teams,” Pacheco said. “But he hadn’t faced another big kid like Joey. We actually practiced with Joey and made him realize how much bigger he is because we hadn’t played a player as tall as (Mayhugh) either. So we knew exactly how to play him.
“You just want to be in the right place at the right time,” Pacheco said. “If you do that you can get those put backs, get the rebounds and get the dish from the point guards.”
The onslaught in the first quarter set the tone for the rest of the afternoon for St. Mary’s and Pacheco ended the day with 15 points, second only behind Abate-Walsh’s 17. The day was a testament to the kind of consistent offense Pacheco has produced for St. Mary’s all year long.
“The start was so important,” St. Mary’s coach Dave Brown said. “Lee is shooting 77 percent from the floor for the season. That’s amazing right there. And again (Saturday), he may have missed a few layups, but overall he had double digits on all put backs and layups. That was important. Once we got some easy baskets guys started feeding off that and using the momentum.”
Now St. Mary’s has punched its ticket to the TD Garden and the state semifinals, a chance Pacheco has been waiting for for a long time.
“It feels great moving on and especially playing at the Garden,” Pacheco said. “We were supposed to go and play there my freshman year but it got snowed out and we had to play at Woburn. It feels great to actually come back and play on that court.”
St. Mary’s will tip off against South champion Burke Wednesday (3:45).
