Offense erupts in second half as Pelham boys basketball beats Souhegan (video)

AMHERST - It looked like the Pelham High School boys basketball team was in for a fight early in the third quarter of Tuesday night's game against Souhegan.

After falling behind early, the Sabers would not go away, getting as close as two points on a handful of occasions, including twice in the first two minutes of the second half.

And then something click for the Pythons. Pelham's offense woke up, and it's defense stepped up, as the Pythons outscored Souhegan 31-8 over the game's final 13 minutes for a 59-34 victory in a Division II contest.

Drew Brown led the way for Pelham (9-2) by scoring 22 points, nine of which came in the third quarter. In the first half, the senior hit three of his team's five 3-pointers, but in the second half, he did most of his damage in and around the paint.

"He really got us out to that lead," Pelham coach Mike Larson said. "Drew is a great player and at the end of the day, if things aren’t going right or things are going sideways, he can make a play and score. And he made a number of great defensive plays."

Derek Crowley was also in double figures, as he scored 11 points while Zack Jones recorded eight points and Keegan Garrett chipped in with six points for Pelham, which was without senior forward Justin Paul.

Souhegan (4-5) got 11 points from Matt McCool while Dawson Hamele added six points and Samuel Corbett chipped in with five. The Sabers never led, and after a jumper by McCool made it 28-26 just 1:56 into the second half, they had two stretches of at least four minutes without scoring.

"We’ll look at the film, and we talked about it in the locker room, I posed the same question to my team," Souhegan coach Peter Pierce said. "I said you’re there, where you want to be, and what happened? I don’t have an answer right now."

Pelham started strong, hitting a few outside shots against Souhegan's zone, including two 3s by Brown in the first quarter. The Pythons took a 13-8 lead into the second quarter and stretched it to 19-11 on another Brown 3-pointer with 4:26 left in the half.

The Sabers quickly got back into it, scoring six straight points to pull within two, and after Crowley and Primmer traded baskets, Pelham's lead was 21-19 with 3:07 remaining in the quarter. After the Pythons took a timeout, Matt Crowley hit a 3 to put Pelham up five points with 2:53 left in the half, and that's where the score remained at the break.

"We were prepared for everything they threw at us and we acted like we’d never seen it before and never talked about it," Larson said. "It was a little frustrating. We had a couple of mental breakdowns, not knowing who we were guarding, and that gave up a couple of baskets. We got in there (at halftime), talked as a group, settled down into what we were supposed to do, and in the second half, we played more to capability."

The teams traded points in the first two minutes of the second half, but then neither team could make a shot until a layup by Jones with 4:53 to go in the third gave Pelham a 30-26 lead.

That started the surge for the Pythons, as Brown followed with a three-point play and Jake Dumont added a putback to give Pelham a nine-point lead and force Souhegan to take a timeout.

McCool made one of two free throws out of the break and Curtis Redd scored to make it a 35-29 Pelham lead, but Brown scored the final four points of the quarter to give the Pythons a 39-29 lead going into the fourth. It was still a 10-point lead with just under six minutes to play, but Souhegan would go scoreless for more than four minutes as Pelham outscored the Sabers 16-1 the rest of the way.

"In the second half, we got dialed into what we wanted to do," Larson said. "We’re capable of putting some runs on people and it just happened to be a time where we had both things clicking together."