GEORGETOWN — It was a tough ask for the Manchester Essex boys basketball team on Wednesday night.
Just 24 hours earlier, the Hornets were in a track meet against a Newburyport team that is probably once again the best in the Cape Ann League, and even dropping 80 points on the Clippers wasn’t enough. Then the very next day, the Hornets had to regroup both mentally and physically to travel down and play a rescheduled game against archrival Georgetown.
So you can forgive the Hornets a little for trailing 18-3 after the first quarter.
The opening eight minutes was definitely a shock to the system for a tired team, but to its massive credit, Manchester fought back to make it just a five-point game midway through the third quarter. But the Hornets simply ran out of gas, and would ultimately drop the second night of their back-to-back to the defending division 4 state champion Royals by a 72-54 final.
“Two super good teams,” said Manchester coach Tim St. Laurent. “We came out really flat in the first quarter, and then we played even with them the rest of the way. You know, it stinks to come out of the gate that flat in this type of big game, but credit to (Georgetown) on how hard they played.”
Trailing 28-19 at the break, Manchester (5-5) made a push.
And it was led by junior forward Alex Ste. Marie, who would finish the night with a team-high 22 points to go along with 8 rebounds. An and-1 at the start of the half was a boost for the Hornets, then a driving layup by fellow junior Graham Lewis (14 pts) made it a 37-32 game and forced a Georgetown (8-4) timeout.
What was behind the turnaround?
“Spacing,” said St. Laurent. “So Georgetown, their mantra is to play tough defense and get you out of spacing so you don’t get good shots. That’s what was happening early on. But we made a good halftime adjustment to deal with that, and we started working the ball more and defending well. But we ran out of gas. We dug too big of a hole tonight to catch up.”
True words from the coach.
After the timeout, a personal 5-0 run by Irvin Zapata (26 pts, 6 3s, 7 rebs) pushed the Georgetown lead back to double digits at 42-32. The Royals got a great boost off the bench from sophomore guard Mezi Rodriguez (11 pts, 7 rebs) to make it a 51-36 game heading into the fourth, then senior Brendan Loewen (17 pts, 5 rebs) and junior Jomar Terrero (10 pts) took the home team to the finish line in the fourth.
Manchester Essex will try to end its four-game skid when it hosts Rockport on Friday night.
Georgetown 72, Manchester Essex 54
at Georgetown High School
Manchester Essex (5-5) 3 16 17 18 |54
Georgetown (8-4) 18 10 23 21 |72
Individual statistics Manchester Essex — Jake Zschau 2-0-4, Alex Ste. Marie 7-7-22, Graham Lewis 4-4-14, Chris Glass 1-0-2, Jacob Zachareas 1-2-5, Jack McCavanagh 0-0-0, Zach Hurd 2-1-5, Parker Woodman 1-0-2, Michael Harris 0-0-0. Totals: 18-14-54
Georgetown — Brendan Loewen 7-2-17, Rayner Hernandez 1-0-2, Jomar Terrero 3-4-10, Irvin Zapata 10-0-26, Tony Tavares Roman 0-2-2, Meziah Rodriguez 3-2-11, Gio Concalves 2-0-4. Totals: 26-10-72
Halftime: 28-19, Georgetown
3-Pointers: G, Zapata 6, Rodriguez 3, Loewen; ME, Lewis 2, Ste. Marie, Zachareas