PEABODY — KIPP Academy’s boys basketball team (2-1) traveled to Peabody and returned to Lynn with a 72-53 win against the Tanners (0-4). It was a complete performance from the Panthers, whose defense and free-flowing offense shined Tuesday.
One player who had it going from the jump was KIPP’s Ethan Gicheru, who scored a game-high 27 points, including 12 in the fourth to help close the game. It wasn’t just his offense that stood out, as Gicheru was a menace on defense.
“You have to be really good to have an offense flow for you in every game you play. The kids who can score a lot are the kids who work hard,” said KIPP coach Moody Bey. “Early in the game, he was playing hard defensively and then the rhythm built. Basketball is funny like that — where the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
KIPP led 30-22 at halftime. In the second half, Peabody’s Mark Mendonca started to heat up and went on a 7-0 run by himself to claw Peabody to a five-point deficit with 2:53 remaining in the third quarter.
Peabody coach Thad Broughton praised Mendonca (12 points) and freshman Ian Salazar (9).
“Mark is a key guy for us, both on offense and defense. We rely on him. He basically doesn’t come out of the game,” Broughton said. “Another guy who I thought gave us really good minutes as a freshman is Ian Salazar. I thought he was tremendous.”
Several times, Peabody went on a run and cut things to two possessions, but KIPP kept responding. Mendonca scored a layup with 2:18 remaining in the third quarter to make it 41-37 in favor of KIPP, but across the next two minutes, the Panthers responded with an 8-1 run to push the lead back to double digits.
“The defense started off great. We then had to press and then that’s when KIPP started to get going,” Broughton said. “They found the holes and they converted. Even when we got it close and down to a three-point game, they quickly got it back out to 11. We made a couple of runs, but we could never sustain it.”
Bey was impressed with how his team responded time and time again.
“We’re a really balanced team and no one is panicking. No matter if we’re up five points or down five — whatever the case may be,” Bey said.
Broughton made sure to credit the opposition.
“KIPP played great; they came ready to play tonight,” he said. “We started out the game and immediately missed a bunch of layups and turned it over. It was the story of the game. We were disjointed tonight, but give a lot of credit to KIPP. They played really well.”
Peabody fell to 0-4. Broughton believes the reason is inconsistency.
“Our biggest issue — individually and as a team — is our inconsistency,” Broughton said. “We play OK in spurts. We just can’t spring it together for the whole game.”
Peabody returns home next Tuesday against Nauset at 6 p.m., while KIPP hosts Shawsheen Valley Tech on New Year’s Eve at 11:30 a.m.
“Defensively, I think we played really well from start to finish. The thing I’m impressed about with this group is that we’re young — not in a sense of grade — but we’re young in our roles,” Bey said. “A lot of these guys haven’t had big roles at the varsity level. A lot of it, for these guys, is learning it in real time. How we played offensively from the first quarter to the fourth quarter, we looked like a different team.”
