Minutes after his team’s semifinal win on Wednesday, Kearsarge Coach Nate Camp recognized the approaching bookend final.
“I said it to the guys just a second ago,” Camp said as his players were still milling around the Southern New Hampshire University court following their 50-39 win against Somersworth. “The season started with Stevens and now it’s going to end with Stevens.”
Kearsarge lost its season opener to the Cardinals, 71-66, on Dec. 13. The Cougars won the rematch in North Sutton on Valentine’s Day, 58-41. And now the two teams will play in a winner-take-all rubber match on Saturday at SNHU when No. 1 Kearsarge (19-2) meets No. 3 Stevens (18-3) in the Division III boys’ basketball championship at 7:30 p.m.
A week after the Cougars lost at Stevens, they lost at Hopkinton and were sitting at 1-2. Since then, Kearsarge has reeled off 18 straight wins, including playoff decisions over No. 16 Winnisquam, 64-49, No. 8 Campbell, 79-67, and the 50-39 semifinal win against No. 5 Somersworth.
Stevens comes in to the championship having won 14 of 15, the loss at Kearsarge the only blemish in that stretch. The Cardinals tournament path has been a 65-56 win against No. 14 Mascoma, a 71-64 win versus No. 6 Belmont and a 61-45 decision over No. 2 Hopkinton in the semifinals.
Considering how hot these two teams are, it’s no surprise they’re meeting in the final. But Camp wouldn’t have been surprised if you told him this would be the championship matchup before the season began.
“People didn’t want to hear it, but I said from the beginning teams from our area are going to be tough,” Camp said. “I thought Stevens was going to be in it and be a contender, I thought the same about us, obviously. Hopkinton is up in our neck of the woods. So the northwest part of the state had a lot of very talented kids.”
That talent starts with 6-foot-8 Kearsarge junior Tayler Mattos. The big man with the soft touch owned the semifinals as he dropped 32 points, 18 rebounds and seven blocks on Somersworth. Somehow slowing Mattos will be a top priority for the Cardinals on Saturday night, but he’s not the only 1,000-point scorer they’ll be facing.
Like Mattos, Kearsarge’s Tommy Johnson passed the 1,000-point mark this year as a junior. Johnson, an athletic 6-foot guard who can shoot from the outside and finish in the paint, reached the milestone when he scored 46 points (and went 19-for-19 from the free throw line) in the quarterfinal win against Campbell.
Johnson and Mattos are clearly the key for the Cougars, but there’s a third junior, 5-11 guard Joe Storozuk, who also started on last year’s runner-up team along with Mattos and Johnson and plays with the poise to prove it. Kearsarge’s other two starters – 6-4 forward Kyle Hernon and 6-foot guard Noah Tremblay – are both sophomores, but they have matured with the season and are capable of big nights.
Stevens counters with a starting five that features four seniors – 6-1 guard Parker Smith, 6-1 forward Zach O’Brien (17 points in the semis), 6-1 forward Nick O’Brien (17 points in the semis) and 5-10 guard Richard Bell. The fifth starter is 5-7 point guard Noah Spaulding, who scored 10 of his 16 semifinal points in the fourth quarter. It’s a versatile group loaded with playmakers and ball handlers who like to get up and down the court.
“They want to push the ball, and I’m fine with it betting in the open floor, just as long as we understand taking good shots,” Camp said. “The bottom line is we have to defend and rebound, and I think what helped Stevens against Hopkinton is they rebounded really well.”
Stevens outrebounded Hopkinton, 34-23, in the semifinals, despite giving up size to the Hawks.
“I have to give praise to (Stevens) as far as how hard they work on the offensive and defensive end rebounding,” Hopkinton Coach Stephen Signor said after the semifinals. “We talked about that the last couple of days. I wasn’t asking my guys to work harder than them, I just asked them to match their intensity.”
The undersized Cardinals will have to muster all of that intensity on the defensive end to prevent Mattos, who scored a combined 54 points in the two games against Stevens, from dominating. But the same can be said of the Cougars, who can’t play the kind of defense they did in the season opener, when Spaulding broke free for 25 points and the Cardinals scored 71, the second highest point total Kearsarge allowed this season.
There’s no doubt the Cougars have come a long way defensively since December. They showed it in their regular-season win against Stevens, holding the Cardinals to 16 points in the second half. And they definitely showed it in the semifinals, holding Somersworth to eight points in the first half and 27.6 percent shooting for the game.
Despite its young starting lineup, Kearsarge has the edge in experience with three starters back from last year’s team that played on the championship stage. Stevens hasn’t been to a boys’ basketball final since 1939.
Neither school has ever claimed a boys’ basketball title, and fans from both Kearsarge and Stevens will probably be driving next to each other along I-89 as they head to Saturday’s game hoping to see history. The two schools separated by 30 miles are local rivals, but they’re friendly rivals.
“There’s a definitely a lot of connections with the two communities and the two schools,” Camp said. “Our AD (Scott Fitzgerald) used to be their AD. They won the football state championship in the fall and we gave them hugs before that basketball season opener and told them great job winning states.
“There’s good sportsmanship there. But on Saturday it’s obviously going to be about doing something that hasn’t been done at Kearsarge.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341 or tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @tosullivan20)