Defense leads Milford to win over Pelham

MILFORD – The Milford High School boys basketball team had been scoring points like crazy.

Not Friday night against Pelham. Fortunately, the Spartans can play defense, too.

Milford failed to score over 80 points for the first time in four games, but held the Pythons to seven points in the third quarter on the way to a 66-40 win Friday in a Division II game.

Mike O’Loughlin led all scorers, dropping in 25 points for Milford (16-0), which won its 34^th straight game. Jamie Holder added nine points and Jovi Philbrick had eight.

Brett Bailey was the only Pelham player in double figures, scoring 11 for the Pythons, who were without Stephen Spirou for the second straight game. While Pelham was getting good looks at the basket, it couldn’t get anything to fall. And when it wasn’t getting good looks, Pelham was turning the ball over 18 times.

“We turned it over a ton, but we got a lot of good looks that we normally make and they didn’t go down,” Pelham coach Matt Regan said. “I think mentally we got out of the game a little because it got a little rough. That’s a senior-heavy team, they’ve been through the wars, where as I think it bothered us. No excuses. We turned it over too much and we didn’t make shots.”

But even as Milford (16-0) was hanging onto a first-half lead, coach Dan Murray wasn’t pleased with the way the Spartans were getting it.

“They started doing individual stuff and you can’t have that,” Murray said. “I keep telling them that if they get beat this year, it will be because of that one-pass, one-shot. They can’t defend us when we have three or four passes. When we’re moving, that’s pretty tough (to do).”

With a few minutes left in the first half, Murray went to his bench and the Spartans ended the half on a 6-0 run to make it 36-24 at halftime.

“Those last two minutes, I put my subs on the floor and pulled (Mike) Mitchell, pulled O’Loughlin,” Murray said. “That’s when we opened up the lead. They were making three or four passes and scoring pretty easily.”

And once the second half started, the Spartans cranked up the defensive pressure and held the Pythons (13-3) without a point for the first five minutes of the third quarter. By then, Milford had a 25-point lead.

“We became cohesive,” Murray said. “In the first half, we had some great traps, but then the third guy didn’t come up. The key was shifting over. The second have was pretty good.”

Regan saw things start to slip at the end of the first half, but felt using a timeout might have been too risky with a short bench.

“There was about two minutes left and we turned it over about five or six straight times,” he said. “Looking back, I probably should have called a timeout to let everybody calm down, but being down a couple of guys, I was concerned we were going to need them in the second half to keep guys fresh. OK, we’re going to put a freshman on one of the top seniors in the state of New Hampshire. We just didn’t have enough bodies to defend them.”

Regan was unsure of how long Spirou will be out, but said the senior won’t return until he’s 100 percent. The Pythons finish out the regular season with games against Windham and at Hollis/Brookline.

Milford will look to close out an undefeated regular season at Bishop Brady on Tuesday and against Con-Val on March 1.