Milford boys hang on to beat Souhegan

MILFORD – The Souhegan High School boys basketball team played with no fear Tuesday night and it almost gave Division II an early-season surprise.

The Sabers stood toe-to-toe with Milford, their biggest rival and the defending champion, and gave the Spartans the one thing coach Mike Heaney has been looking for – a game.

Souhegan trailed by as little as four late in the final quarter, but Milford made its free throws down the stretch and held on for a 62-52 win that was in doubt almost down to the final buzzer. And the Sabers were able to do that without Devin Gilligan, one of their leading scorers.

“I’ve never been prouder of a game that I’ve coached at Souhegan,” Heaney said. “We find out last night that one of our starting five, one of our top two scorers, can’t go and we play the defending champs in their house and are within two possessions late in the fourth quarter … I hate losing like any one, but that might be the most fun I’ve had coaching.”

Mike O’Loughlin scored 15 of his game-high 17 points in the second and Mike Mitchell added 14 markers for Milford (3-0 in division). The two also combined to go 12-of-13 from the free throw, including 6-of-6 in the final 25 seconds of the game.

Souhegan (2-1) got 13 points from Seth Cordts and 12 from Sean McGrath, who made his first varsity start in place of Gilligan. Ryan Redmond also had 10 points for the Sabers, who had nine different players score for them.

After falling to Milford by 11 points less than a week ago in the finals of the Cheshire Tires/Autocare Center Holiday Festival at Keene State College, the Sabers knew what to expect and how to handle themselves on the floor.

“We’re not afraid of them anymore,” Redmond said. “That’s really the big thing. All the other years I’ve been on the team, we’ve been scared. Now we’ll man them up and we’re not afraid of them.”

While Souhegan could have done a few things differently, it couldn’t have put in more effort, according to Heaney.

“McGrath was told last night that he’d have to start,” he said. “No varsity experience and showed no fear. Shaun McKenna had to guard Mike O’Loughlin, one of the favorites for Player of the Year, and had no fear. We turned to Brandon Len and said that Mike Mitchell, a great defensive point guard, is going to be in your face all 90 feet for 32 minutes, a sophomore point guard with no fear. They played their hearts out. We didn’t play as well as we could have played, but we couldn’t have played any harder.”

The Sabers took the lead a couple of times in the first quarter, but after Souhegan led 12-11 with 2:35 to play, Milford went on a 13-3 run to take a nine-point lead late in the second quarter. A 3-pointer from McGrath and a layup by Cordts helped to cut the Milford advantage to six at the break, and the Sabers opened the second half by whittling the lead down to two, 30-28.

“I think we felt kind of shocked that they were staying with us,” O’Loughlin said. “We were playing kind of selfish, too many one-pass shots in the first half. The second half, we shared the ball a little more.

“We have a bunch of so-called superstars, so everyone wants to take over. Sometimes it gets out of hand, but we’ve been playing together so long, we know how to mold together as a team. We know our roles.”

The Spartans used that knowledge to go on a 7-0 run to get the lead back to nine points, thanks to a layup and 3 by O’Loughlin and a basket from Kyle Nelson.

Milford looked like it was going to put the game away early in the fourth quarter, but Souhegan went on an 8-3 run, cutting the lead to 52-48 on a putback by McGrath with 2:25 to play.

The Sabers started to put the Spartans on the free throw line, and Milford finished the game by making 8-of-11 foul shots to close out the win.

Both teams are back in action on Friday, when Milford heads to Pelham and Souhegan hosts St. Thomas.