MANCHESTER – In the first half, he scored all but two of Kearsarge’s points and blocked as many shots as Somersworth made.
By the end, Tayler Mattos had amassed 32 points, 18 rebounds and seven blocks, and the student section was chanting “MVP” during his free throws, as the 6-foot-8 junior led the top-ranked Cougars to a 50-39 win over No. 5 Somersworth in Wednesday’s Division III boys’ basketball semifinals at Southern New Hampshire University.
“I can’t say enough good things about Tayler,” Kearsarge Coach Nate Camp said. “He’s a special kid…he’s the real deal.”
But don’t ask Mattos to say good things about himself.
“I just want to do what I can to help my teammates,” he said.
The win moves No. 1 Kearsarge (19-2) into Saturday’s championship game against No. 3 Stevens (18-3). The Cougars lost in last year’s final to Pelham, and they haven’t forgotten.
“Our motto is finish what we started,” Camp said.
To do that, the Cougars will want to start better than they did against Somersworth (17-4). Kearsarge scored just eight points in the first quarter … and only seven in the second. Mattos had 13 of those 15 first-half points on 6-for-11 shooting while the rest of the team went 1-for-13.
“It was sloppy, a lot of turnovers, but we just had to stay mentally tough,” said Mattos, who acknowledged that playing in a pair of tight games in last year’s D-III final four helped the Cougars forge that toughness.
“This group is really resilient,” Camp said.
They showed that toughness and resiliency by not letting their spotty offense impact their defense. Kearsarge held the Hilltoppers to just 14.8 percent shooting (4-for-27) in the first half and took a 15-8 lead into halftime.
While those 16 minutes of basketball were painful on the eyes, the two teams made up for it in the second half. Somersworth’s Colby Grant scored eight of this 10 points in the third and when Bryton Early (17 points) hit a pull up jumper with 3:23 left in the quarter, the Hilltoppers had their first lead of the game, 21-19.
Over the next five minutes there were five ties or lead changes as the two teams went back and forth – the Cougars powered by the massive Mattos, and Somersworth following the lightning-quick Early. Kearsarge finally gained a little breathing room when Joe Storozuk found Tommy Johnson (11 points) on the left wing and Johnson buried his team’s only 3 of the game to give the Cougars a 32-26 lead with 5:09 left in the fourth.
“That three on the wing bumped the lead and the momentum shifted,” Camp said, “That was big because the Hilltoppers weren’t going away.”
They still didn’t go away after that, and it was a just a one-possession game, 41-39, after a Somersworth bucket with 1:30 left. The Cougars even missed their next shot, but Mattos was there to gather a tough rebound in traffic, got fouled and then buried a pair free throws. That began a 7-for-10 Kearsarge run from the foul line that iced the game and a return trip to the finals.
No. 3 Stevens 61,
No. 2 Hopkinton 45
Steve Signor didn’t notice anything unusual before the game, but the Hopkinton coach did see something as soon as the whistle blew on his team’s D-III semifinal against No. 3 Stevens.
“I could tell on that first possession down the floor, we just threw it out of bounds and they were definitely nervous out there,” Signor said.
The Cardinals took advantage of those nerves and opened the game on a 13-0 run. The second-seeded Hawks clawed back in the middle quarters, getting the lead down to three late in the third. But Stevens got hot again in the fourth, Hopkinton couldn’t do anything about it and the Cardinals claimed a 61-45 win.
“What I think happened was we just had to exert so much energy on the defensive end in that second quarter and third quarter to get back into the game, that we just left it all out there,” Signor said. “We just didn’t have any thing left after that.”
A bucket from Henry Yianakopolos (13 points, three rebounds) in the final minute of the third brought Hopkinton (18-3) to within three, 40-37. The fourth quarter promised to be dramatic, but Stevens had other ideas.
The Cardinals (18-3) like to push the ball, and that’s exactly what they did in the final quarter. After a pretty crossover and layup from Hopkinton’s Cam Cyr (team-high 15 points), Stevens went on a game-clinching 12-0 run. Noah Spaulding scored six of his 16 points during that stretch as he kept getting behind a tired Hopkinton defense. By the end of the fourth, the Cardinals had hit on eight of their 10 shots while the Hawks were just 3-for-14.
That final quarter felt like an echo of the first. Stevens started the game humming on offense, creating a parade of open layups and hitting its first seven shots. On the other end, Hopkinton had four turnovers and four misses on its first eight possession. The result was a 13-0 lead for Stevens after a 3 from Zach O’Brien (17 points, seven rebounds) with 3:14 to play in the first.
The Hawks made it 21-8 by the end of the first and Yianakopolos pulled them closer during the middle quarters. The rugged senior wore a path to the line in the second, making four trips there in the frame, came up with a pair of steals and helped Hopkinton close the gap to 31-22 by halftime. He scored six more in the third as the Hawks made it 41-37 after three, but it was all Stevens in the fourth.
“Im proud of these guys,” Signor said. “I wouldn’t pick any other team ever to coach than these guys right here this year … The thing I told them in (the locker room after the game) was that they liked each other on day one and they like each other right now,” Signor said. “We talk about family and that’s a family in there.”