By Mark Carpenter
For Coach Nathan Copas and his North Adams Green Devils, Monday night’s Division III sectional opener wit the Nelsonville-York Buckeyes was the perfect example of the basketball cliche, “a tale of two halves”. Playing on their home court, the Devils lit up the scoreboard in the first two quarters, going 11 for 18 from beyond the three-point arc and racking up 49 points.
Fortunately for the home team, the 24-point halftime lead they built turned out to be enough, because they turned in a very lackluster second half but were able to hang on to send the Buckeyes home with a 77-61 defeat, a game that shouldn’t have been as close as the final score says.
“I was pleased wit the way we shot the basketball in the first half, said Coach Copas after the win. “When you’re shooting the basketball well, you can hide a lot of other things. There were things we weren’t doing well, but our shooting overshadowed that.”
“At halftime, we talked about some of those things, especially defensively. We gave up a lot of open looks and we just weren’t guarding like we should have been. We did a decent job for three quarters but then that fourth quarter came.”
For the first four minutes of the game, the score was tight, and a three-pointer by Cade Meade gave the Devils a 10-6 advantage. From that point on, the opening period belonged to North Adams. mostly because of a barrage of long-distance buckets. A three-ball from the corner by Andrew Brand made it 13-6 and then later in the stanza, the Devils got three-pointers on four consecutive possessions, all of them from freshman guard Bransyn Copas, the final bomb giving the Devils a 25-12 lead after one.
After a 6-0 run by the Buckeyes early in the second quarter closed the gap to 27-18, the Devils responded with a 10-0 burst of their own, including three more three-point goals, one from Jayden Hesler and the other two from Seth Vogel that made it 37-18.
The North Adams offense continued to click on all cylinders, getting contributions from their bench with a layup by Fulton Kennedy, a three-point bucket from Avery Anderson, and a jumper from Caleb Rothwell. With one final three-point goal, this one by Hesler, the Devils took a commanding 49-25 lead to the halftime break.
After the break, it looked like the Devils were going to continue what they had already done, extending the lead out to 55-27, scoring on their first three possessions of the third period. Though the home team retained a comfortable margin through the third, they just didn’t look as sharp as they had in the first half. A long three-pointer by Rothwell, the only one by his team in the second half, gave his team a 60-38 advantage and the third quarter ended with the Devils still in control, 64-39.
Though the outcome of the contest was never really in doubt, the effort put forth in the final eight minutes by the Green Devils left much to be desired. Nelsonville never got the lead down below single digits, but they totally out hustled the home team, who fortunately had the wide advantage in their pockets. The Buckeyes won the fourth period 22-13, but when the final points of the game came on a put back by the Devils’ Kamden Buttelwerth, North Adams had moved on to the sectional finals with the final 16-point margin.
“We talked at the half about keeping our focus and to keep taking good shots,” said Coach Copas. “When we start taking bad and quick shots,that’s when things start to get ugly. We missed some easy shots in that fourth quarter and they scored some points quick on us. In this day and age, a 20-point lead isn’t that big of a lead. We just have to have focus.”
The winners placed a quartet of players in double figures, led by 15 points each from Bransyn Copas and Cade Meade. Jayden Hesler pitched in with 14, while Seth Vogel added 10. Off the bench, Caleb Rothwell added 7 points for the Devils.
The Buckeyes also put four players in double figures, led by 13 points from Drew Carter, with Joe Tome adding 12, and Brayden McKee and Ethan Gail getting 10 each.
The win improved the Green Devils to 13-6 on the season and earned them a berth in a Division III sectional championship game on Feb. 26, again on their home floor. North Adams will host Minford, a team they lost to in double overtime earlier in the season, Tip off is set for 7 p.m. in Seaman.
“We didn’t shoot the ball well when we played them earlier and I knew there was a pretty good chance we’d see them again,” said the North Adams head coach. “They’re a very good team and we have to just be good for four quarters.”
Nelsonville-York
12 13 14 22 —61
North Adams
25 24 15 13 —77
Nelsonville (61): Carter 5 1-2 13, McKee 4 2-4 10, Gail 5 0-1 10. Tome 3 4-4 12, Swope 2 3-5 7, Trent Morrissey 2 0-0 4, Trevor Morrissey 1 2-2 5, Team 20 12-18 61.
N. Adams (77): Hesler 5 2-5 14, Vogel 4 0-0 10, Copas 5 1-5 15, Brand 2 1-2 6, Rothwell 3 0-0 7, Anderson 2 0-0 5, Buttelwerth 1 0-0 2, C. Meade 6 2-3 15, Kennedy 1 1-2 3, Team 29 7-16 77.
Three-Point Goals:
Nelsonville (3)- Carter 2, Trevor Morrissey 1
N. Adams (12)- Hesler 2. Copas 4, Vogel 2, Brand 1, Rothwell 1, Anderson 1, C.Meade 1
