The playoffs looked like a distant dream for the Hollis/Brookline High School boys basketball team a month ago.
The Cavaliers had lost five in a row to fall to 3-9 in Class I, a record that put them well on the outside of the top 16. And because of the Heal Point System, which is being used in all Class I sports this season, it looked like there wasn’t even much of a chance that H/B could win its way back into the playoffs.
But four weeks later, after five wins in six games, the Cavs are done the regular season and expect to be playing at least one more game when the preliminary round starts on Tuesday.
“We had so many new kids, so many with limited or no varsity experience,” H/B coach Mike Soucy said. “The coaching staff knew we weren’t good, but with hard work and dedication, we might come around. When you lose that many games in the middle of the season, it’s hard not to hang up the sneakers.”
So how did a team facing those odds – a team Soucy admits has “no pure shooters, no great size, nobody who can really dictate and not the most athletic team either” – find its way past a long losing streak and into the postseason?
With two things – determination and defense.
Soucy’s teams have strictly played man-to-man schemes in the past, but because of the skill set of this year’s group, the coaching staff decided to try something new. In came a 2-3 matchup zone that has proven difficult to master.
But the players bought into it, so much so that when Soucy tried to change the game plan recently, he was met with strong resistance.
“They were adamant about not changing,” Soucy said. “This is a group of kids who played little to no zone and bought into the system.”
It was a loss that helped the Cavs turn the corner.
In its second meeting of the season with Milford, H/B fell at home on Jan. 29 to the Spartans by 17 points. Doesn’t sound like much, but the Cavs had lost at Milford by 40 earlier in the year, and trailed by less than 10 with two minutes left in that late January game.
“It was a matter of the kids beginning to believe,” Soucy said. “We had a lot of good, quality games, but didn’t win. But we got the sense that we were getting there. We were playing better and executing more consistently.”
It also helped that the Cavs were starting to get healthy. The team has five seniors, and three of them were hurt for a portion of the year.
Once those players returned, Soucy had a larger arsenal to work with.
“They really have set the tone all year, which is nice to see,” Soucy said. “They’re not very vocal, but they’re a bunch of hard workers. The young kids have learned a lot.”
The Cavs’ win streak started with back-to-back victories over Monadnock (1-17). At that point, H/B had five wins, but those five were against the Huskies, Con-Val (2-16) and St. Thomas (4-14).
“We wouldn’t have gotten a lot of credit for beating them,” Soucy said. “No disrespect there, but we needed to play against top competition.”
In their final four games, the Cavs pulled out wins over Bow, Souhegan and Bedford. Those wins were enough to catapult them from out of the playoff picture to No. 14 in Class I.
With a few regular season games still left on Friday night, Soucy still doesn’t know for sure where his team will open the playoffs, but he does know that it’s in.
A month ago, that didn’t seem possible.
“All the credit goes to the kids,” Soucy said. “I can’t say enough about how great they’ve been. They bought into the whole idea. It’s been remarkable, special group.”
