ANDOVER — Another night, another Andover High hoop sweep, although due to the weather and traffic, this one took a bit longer than anticipated at the Dunn Gym.
Marshfield High’s boys made the long, slow trek up I-93, and Andover made them wish they never did, pounding the visitors, 72-47.
The No. 2 seeded Warriors will now face Xaverian in the state quarterfinals.
Josh Roux led the way with 22 points, while Logan Sullivan added 18 and both Charlie Tutwiler and Roman Giammarco had 11 each. Benjamin Hnat was immense on the boards with 16.
“This team, I don’t know what it is, maybe this team gets me over the top. The curse of never winning a state title in 37 years, OK, maybe that’s real,” joked Andover head coach Dave Fazio. “This team is special. I teach them how to play defense and run a little offense and then I just try to get out of their way.”
Meanwhile, the Andover girls took care of business in the opener of the doubleheader.
Martin lights it up for Andover girls
Heading into Tuesday night’s playoff game, Andover needed its guards to deliver — especially from the outside. Facing a Westford Academy team that has a considerable height advantage, in was imperative that the Golden Warriors played quick potato with the ball to find the open player.
And more often than not when that happened, the ball landed in the hands of either sophomore Kallie Martin, who drained five three-pointers, or senior Kiera Lenihan (18 points).
The duo combined to score 33 points to lead the No. 4 Golden Warriors to a 55-43 victory over the No. 13 seeded Grey Ghosts in a Division 1 Round of 16 contest played Tuesday night.
“I knew that I had to try to keep us in it, our energy got down there for a bit,” said Martin. “My teammates were the ones who got me the ball, so then I was open to take some threes. You’ve got to keep shooting to get hot. Once you do get hot, you have to keep shooting.”
Andover (21-1) will now take on the winner of No. 5 South High Community/No. 21 Malden Catholic in the Round of 8.
“Those are both really good teams so we’re going to see who we get, prepare for them and do the best we can to pull out another win,” said Martin.
The Golden Warriors’ defensive pressure gave the Grey Ghosts all kinds of problems, including forcing over 20 turnovers.
“We had to make them uncomfortable the best we could. Their size was definitely intimidating and we just thought that we had to make it difficult,” said Andover head coach Alan Hibino. “I thought our guards, Kallie and Emery (Pereira) did a great job pressuring their guards to make those inside passes more difficult.”
Andover jumped out to an 11-6 first quarter lead before opening it up to double digits midway through the second before the Grey Ghosts cut it to nine at the break.
Both teams went cold for a bit shooting wise in the third quarter, before Andover opened the third quarter up on a quick 5-0 run behind a short jumper from Haley Magenheim, followed by a three from Martin to push Andover’s lead to 16.
“We got out in transition a bit and were able to make some shots,” said Hibino. “The ball moves pretty well with our team. We were trying to encourage more people to be more aggressive and more assertive. The ball finds the open person and we did an excellent job with the ball movement.”
Westford responded with a 10-2 run before Andover locked it down defensively in the final 90 seconds.
“Basically every one of their players is as athletic as they come,” said Westford head coach Camille Desrochers. “Our height has helped us all year but when you run into a team with that kind of athleticism, it’s tough. To go up against one of the top teams in the state and play them so tough is a credit to the girls. I think they are going to all of the way.”