That “Ping” is the sound of a pin dropping that we hear because nobody’s talking MVC hoops.
Hmmm. I know somebody was at Lawrence’s upset of Andover last night.
What no scuttlebutt?
No joy?
No anger?
Well, I’ll ignore all late third quarter explosion and all the emotions and just make a few observations:
1. In describing Lawrence, I would almost call the Lancers bipolar. They ran some fast breaks last night that looked like a college team doing drills. Whipped passes, no dribble, ball up the floor in a split second.
And then there were times where the lancers simply flung the ball out of bounds or tossed it off the backboard.
They are scary. Scary good and scary bad, too.
2. It was nice to watch Justin Nieves play like he can. Here’s a kid who often puts the weight of that program on hs back. And playing like that, he’s very dangerous.
3. Lawrence beat a quality team on a night in which it shot 10 of 25 fromthe foul like. Enough said about how dangeous the Lancers are come tourney time.
4. Jesse Hiraldo, at 6-5, and Anthony DeJesus were loads inside. Again, if Lawrence can find a way to utilize the inside game, it’s only going to make things easier for nieves and Jaylen Alicea on the edge.
Now to the Warriors, whose performance was a bit of a head-scratcher.
1. Clearly, Andover lost its poise in the second half. First and foremost, the game turned when Andover lost its cool and started giving away trips with really odd fouls.
2. The Warriors were a little unfortunate and a little unwise.
First, hot hand Kevin Polanco was on his way to a monster night, hitting everything in sight, only to miss the last quarter with an injury. Hence, the bad luck.
Then, Andover just got away from Connor Arnold, whose “McHale-like” work on the block was ravaging Lawrence.
“He fouled two of our big guys out, we couldn’t stop him,’ said Lancer coach Paul Neal.
The Warriors went long distance on a night when they just couldn’t find the basket.
That was the difference.
All that said, i can’t explain the second-half fireworks that included confrontations with the players, coaches and officials.
Players left the benches on both ends, coaches went ballistic and poor Sean Ehlbeck, who clapped at a foul call gets T-ed up for taunting. Talk about a kid who was being made an example of.Wrong place, wrong time I guess.
Until that point, the game was just cruising along. Things were fine and dandy.
All of a sudden, it exploded.
Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, sort of.
