AMHERST, N.H. — Undefeated no more. Unhappy for sure.
That’s the state in which the Lebanon High boys basketball team left NHIAA Division II foe Souhegan on Monday night. The Raiders knocked the Sabers from the ranks of the unbeaten with a startling 60-44 victory.
Guard Braeden Falzarano carried Lebanon offensively, scoring 23 points and grabbing 12 rebounds. Backcourt mate and fellow senior Cole Fabry had perhaps the night of his high school career, pouring in 21 points, including two off-balance baskets on seemingly impossible drives to the hoop.
Another fourth-year player, Jack Stone, added 11 points, the final two on a resounding breakaway dunk that finally silenced the home team’s raucous student section in the late going. Stone also shut down the Sabers’ touted 6-foot-7 center, Johnny McBride, holding the senior to just four points and leaving him practicing free throws as the gym emptied out.
Both teams are 10-1.
“I don’t know that there was a single facet of the game we didn’t get outplayed in,” said Souhegan coach Peter Pierce, whose team trailed by two points after a quarter and 10 points both at halftime and with a period remaining. “They were quicker and stronger and more aggressive.
“My kids hadn’t been challenged all season, and a lot of them haven’t seen (playoff) tournament basketball. There were a lot of parts of tonight that resembled tournament basketball.”
Falzarano repeatedly created his own shots by driving into traffic, wriggling past bodies and arms and finishing difficult plays at the rim. He said he became accustomed to finding his way through thickets of limbs while growing up competing against his older brother, Logan, and his sibling’s friends.
“Everyone’s taller than you,” Falzarano said of those childhood games. “You have to figure out a way to get up and under them.”
Said Pierce: “That kid has great dexterity. I got to give him credit for finishing all those shots. I don’t know that they’d all go in every night, but he had a great game.”
McBride might wind up a first team all-state selection, but Lebanon put the clamps on him and on a Sabers squad Lebanon coach Kieth Matte believes is one of the four best in D-II.
“McBride’s a great player, but Jack Stone is a superior athlete and so versatile,” Matte said of the Plainfield resident, who’s hoping to play NCAA Division I college football. “It sometimes goes unseen how great a player Jack is until he has an effort like this. He looked fresh at the end of the game, and he never came out.”
Pierce said the Sabers were proficient in getting the ball inside to McBride, but the swarming Raiders collapsed on the big man like a wet blanket.
“We tried to get him the ball in places he could work,” the Souhegan boss said. “Customarily, he’s going to finish a few more shots, and that would have made a big difference.
“They didn’t show him a lot of lanes to the hoop. They primarily played him one-on-one, but there was a lot of help defense, which is a good game plan, and they had great execution.”
Asked how his group prepared for a team that’s scored 60 or more points six times, Matte chuckled, then pointed out his team is in the early stages of playing 10 games in 14 days to conclude the regular season. Weather and COVID-19 issues created a logjam that doesn’t leave much time to prepare for individual opponents, but the Raiders seem constructed to handle such a slate.
“We don’t have any super-duper, skilled kids, but we have really good athletes,” Matte said. “Our identity is that we’re tough and we’ll play harder than you and not give you easy baskets in transition.
“We hang our hats on defense, and we talk about how nobody gets to run on us.”
With more performances like Monday’s gem, the Raiders are sure to leave a growing number of unhappy opponents in their wake.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.