DURHAM – Jamie Holder didn’t need to think long when asked to express himself after the Milford High School boys basketball team won the Class I championship Saturday afternoon.
Dan Desmarais of Milford holds up the championship plaque as he stands next to Jamie Holder after the Class I title game. For more photos, see the Photo Album.
“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” the Milford junior said. “By far.”
Teammate Mike O’Loughlin had similar thoughts.
“This is the greatest feeling I’ve ever felt,” he said. “We’ve been waiting our whole lives for this. When knew we could do this in eighth grade, when we won the middle school championship.”
Their coach, Dan Murray, knows what they’re feeling – he won a Class L basketball title as a junior at Milford in 1972.
Now Murray has another title – the school’s first since 1975 and third overall – this time as a coach, as the Spartans finished off the season with a 52-46 win over Pembroke at the University of New Hampshire’s Lunhold Gymnasium.
“They’re next to each other,” Murray said when asked to compare winning as a coach to winning as a player. “It’s a great thing for Milford. It’s been a long time.”
Thirty-five years to be exact, and the jubilation was noticeable as it wasn’t only the Milford student section that rushed to the area behind the Spartans’ bench once the game was over. A number of parents, teachers, school administrators and other adults were right there, too, hugging players and shaking Murray’s hand.
But the one person who wasn’t there was probably the most worrisome before the game for the Spartans.
Milford was forced to play without point guard Mike Mitchell, who was ineligible to play after a school suspension.
That meant Murray had to lean on Holder and O’Loughlin even more, not just for their scoring – the duo did combine for 37 points – but also for their floor leadership.
Both responded.
“Those two guys where huge,” Murray said. “When one needed the other one to step up, Mike would take over for a few possessions and Jamie could almost take a little breather. Then when Mike settled down, Jamie would take over for two or three possessions. And then they fed off each other a little bit. All the other players fit right in the mold.”
The Spartans (21-1) needed that early on, as both they and Pembroke (19-3) opened the game shooting poorly. Neither team scored until Holder sank a jumper just under three minutes into the game. He went on to Milford’s first eight points, including two 3-pointers, as the Spartans got out to a 10-2 lead.
Milford's Mike O'Loughlin drives to the basket.
“Being a final, I think both teams were feeling each other out,” Murray said. “We had some missed shots, but they were contested shots. And they were all good shots. Same thing with them, they were getting some decent looks.”
Pembroke responded with a 10-2 run of its own and tied the game at 12 early in the second quarter. From there, it was a series of runs to end the half, with Milford taking a lead of 24-16 before Pembroke closed the gap to 24-22 at halftime.
“We expected that,” Holder said of the up-and-down half. “We did it to Portsmouth, so we knew (Pembroke) could do that.”
Pembroke continued it into the second half, as Milford struggled to make shots. Sheldon Benson scored six straight points for the Spartans in green, while the Spartans in white missed their first six shots from the field.
A 3-pointer by Coleton Neely (game-high 24 points) gave Pembroke its biggest lead, 31-26, with 4:42 left in the third quarter, but O’Loughlin (23 points) answered with a 3 of his own and added a layup to tie the game.
In all, O’Loughlin had nine of Milford’s 14 third-quarter points to help the Spartans retake the lead, 38-36. Milford scored six of the first eight points in the fourth to push the lead to 44-38 with 5:26 to play.
From there, Pembroke’s short bench began to show. The Spartans had a number of shots blocked in the fourth quarter, and made just one field goal – a 3 by Neely that made it 44-41 with 3:13 to play. Pembroke got within three points on two other occasions, but couldn’t get any closer.
“They’re a thin team and we’re deep,” O’Loughlin said. “We can go off our bench with a couple guys. They were getting tired. We weren’t going to turn the ball over. If they were going to win it, they were going to have to win it. We weren’t giving it to them.”
Two free throws by Neely cut it to 48-45 with 19.3 seconds left, and Holder went to the line for a one-and-one with 14 seconds on the clock. When he missed the free throw, O’Loughlin was there to get the rebound and put it back in, making it a two possession game.
“Both (Mike) and Jamie were great leaders for us offensively,” Murray said. “They did a great job of controlling the game.”
The Milford boys basketball team poses with the championship plaque.