Green Wave bedeviled

By JASON BUTYNSKI

Staff Writer

Published: 02-25-2019 10:30 PM

GREENFIELD — At one point during the fourth quarter of Monday night’s WMass Division 3 Boys’ Basketball first round game, Murdock High School junior guard LJ Hicks took the first shot of a one-and-one. As the shot went into the air, players from both teams began jockeying for position for a potential rebound. As the ball swished through the hoop, Hicks turned to his team’s bench, smirked and said, “I ain’t gonna miss.”

It certainly felt that way for much of the night as Hicks scored a team-high 27 points to lead the ninth-seeded Blue Devils past eighth-seeded Greenfield High School, 68-50, at Nichols Gymnasium.

“Every night my coach tells me I have to come to show up and play,” Hicks said. “I have to come prepared and mentally focused.”

Hicks was a highlight-reel package for much of the game as his speed and body control going to the hoop led him to score 11 field goals on the night. Several came on fast breaks after steals, while others were him seemingly throwing up prayers as he drove into traffic in the lane. Time and again, those shots dropped much to the chagrin of the Green Wave faithful.

Greenfield (11-10) dug itself a large hole early on and was never able to recover, and much of that was due to Hicks, who scored nine points in the first quarter as the Blue Devils (13-8) raced out to a 21-8 lead after one. Greenfield led 4-3 two minutes into the game, but the Devils went on a 15-0 run over a five-minute span to open up a 18-4 advantage. The run was aided by three steals and layups from Hicks, as well as a pair of baskets on putbacks by an undersized Murdock frontcourt.

“We play hard, but 30 turnovers, you’re not going to win many games like that,” Greenfield coach Angelo Thomas said. “And they had 16 offensive boards, that’s just a desire to get the ball. They weren’t bigger than us. They just wanted it.”

Greenfield hung around in the second quarter, keeping the deficit near 10 points for much of the half. The issue for the Wave was that when the team seemed to gain a little momentum, someone from Murdock was there to answer. Greenfield closed the gap to eight points just after the midpoint of the quarter, but a 3-pointer by Murdock’s Dylan Lupien quieted the crowd and brought the lead back to 11.

Greenfield did get the deficit down to six points midway through the third quarter as it opened the frame on a 9-5 run, but once again Lupien was there to answer with a 3-pointer to stop the bleeding. The lead remained at six or seven points until the final two minutes of the third when Murdock closed on an 8-0 run to push the lead back to 15 (54-39) heading into the fourth and all but deflating the Wave.

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“We’ve kind of dug ourselves into holes consistently this year, and we’ve never given up,” Thomas said. “We battled back and got it to six, but you just expend so much energy trying to get back into it. If you don’t get into that hole, you give yourselves a chance.”

The fourth quarter was a matter of semantics, as Murdock pushed the lead to 22 early on and kept it near 20 throughout. Hicks, who is already a 1,000-point scorer in his career despite being only a junior, added nine more points in the second quarter and wound up finishing with his 27, while Luis Maldonado netted 16 points. Lupien finished with four 3-pointers to end the night with 12 points.

Mason Meadows had a huge night offensively for the Green Wave and it started right away as he scored the first six points of the game for Greenfield and went on to score a game-high 28 points. Thomas said that he expects even more from his sophomore forward in the years to come.

“The ceiling is so high for him if he dedicated himself in the offseason,” Thomas said. “He had 28 tonight, but I say he could have had 40.”

Senior Hunter Campbell finished with 8 points for the Green Wave, and classmate Owen Phelps tossed in 7 points.

“We got a home game in the tournament and we got a league championship,” Thomas said, reflecting on his first season as coach of his alma mater. “We gave ourselves an opportunity, we just didn’t take advantage of it.”

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