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# Pembroke boys basketball survives Sanborn come back to win D2 championship (video)
- URL: https://www.nh-highschoolsports.com/pembroke-boys-basketball-survives-sanborn-come-back-to-win-d2-championship-video/
- Published: 2025-03-17T15:30:51.000Z
- Updated: 2025-03-17T15:30:51.000Z
- Description: DURHAM - With a little more than a minute to go in the third quarter of Sunday's Division II championship game, the Pembroke Academy boys basketball looked to be in complete control. The Spartans lead had been around nine or 10 points for most of the quarter, as their defense had held down Sanborn's
- Author: Joe Marchilena
- Tags: Division II, boys basketball, championship, Pembroke, playoffs, Sanborn, slider, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-08-18 04:44

DURHAM - With a little more than a minute to go in the third quarter of Sunday's Division II championship game, the Pembroke Academy boys basketball looked to be in complete control.

The Spartans lead had been around nine or 10 points for most of the quarter, as their defense had held down Sanborn's top scoring threats for large stretches of the game.

But late in the third, the Indians awoke, as Chase Frizzell scored every point on a 10-4 run by Sanborn, ending with a 3-pointer with 6:33 remaining that made it a three-point game and forced Pembroke to take a timeout.

During that break, the top-seeded Spartans regrouped, and answered the No. 3 Indians' run with one of their own, outscoring Sanborn 11-5 the rest of the way to take a 63-54 win and the D2 title at the University of New Hampshire's Lundholm Gymnasium.

"They’ve done this all year," Pembroke coach Mike Donnell said. "When something happens like that, they don’t get too worked up. I called a timeout, we went over what was going on, we knew for a fact that we stopped boxing out and we were making bad passes with turnovers. I told them to settle down, not make the game too big. Keep it simple, and they did, and we opened it back up again."

Pembroke (19-2) got points from five different players during that run, another thing that Donnell noted the team had done all season.

"The biggest thing with our team is that we’re not a selfish group," the coach said. "We go with the guy who has the hot hand. These guys love each other and it showed out there."

The hot hand in the first half was Andrew Fitzgerald, who scored 17 of his game-high 26 points in the second quarter. The sophomore also had a game-high 11 rebounds while shooting 11 of 16 from the field.

"Andrew went crazy," Pembroke senior Evan Berkeley said. "I looked up at one point late in the game and he 25 or something. I was like ‘someone needs to stop him.’"

Berkeley added 15 points, including 9 of 12 at the free throw line, and had five assists while Zac Bemis finished with 11 points and six rebounds, as the Spartans held a 43-30 edge on the boards.

Frizzell finished with 22 points and seven rebounds for Sanborn (17-5) and Jesse Cavallo had 15 points and six steals. But no one else had more than five points for the Indians, as Pembroke held Dylan Rego to just four points. The senior also had nine rebounds.

"We all know, it was the two great scorers they’ve got," Berkeley said. "Rego is really good along the baseline, so whenever the ball got down into the halfcourt, we kept in contact with him as much as we could. Frizzell, I mean, he’s a hard guard, as we saw. He gave us some problems."

Pembroke got out in front early, taking an 8-3 lead before Sanborn found its footing. The Indians went on a 13-6 run to take a 16-14 lead in the final seconds of the first quarter, but Pembroke's Javien Sinclair scored at the buzzer to tie it at 16 after one.

The teams got into a shootout in the second quarter, as each side went 8 of 14 from the floor, and the game was tied four times and the lead changed hands five times. The Spartans took a 35-33 lead into halftime, but Indians coach Wayne Souther felt it wasn't in his team's best interest to keep playing at that pace.

"We let Andrew Fitzgerald get hot," the coach said. "We knew he could shoot the basketball. I think our defense wasn’t there (Sunday). Communication wasn’t great. It’s a loud building, so it’s hard, but I think we could have communicated a little bit better.

"Second half, we could have searched for better shots. We started trying to match them almost and that’s not the team you want to get into a shooting contest with. We needed to search for layups."

Pembroke opened the half with an 11-3 run, taking a 46-36 lead on a basket by Devin Riel (seven points) with 4:41 remaining in the third quarter. After a scoreless stretch for both teams, Frizzell hit a 3 to cut the lead to seven, and after the teams traded baskets, the senior ended the quarter with a two-handed dunk that got Sanborn within six points going into the fourth.

After Berkeley scored to open the final quarter and get the lead back to eight, Frizzell hit two free throws and added another 3 to cut Pembroke's lead to 52-49 with 6:33 to play.

"We knew coming here, we were going to play our game and get off the court and hopefully we win," Berkeley said. "We did that. It was getting defensive stops and turning it around on offense and scoring."

While Pembroke built the lead back up, it was also holding Sanborn scoreless for almost five minutes. By the time the Indians scored again after Frizzell's 3-pointer, they were down eight points and under two minutes remained.

"Basketball is a funny game," Donnell said. "You can be up 10 or 14 points, and all of a sudden, it doesn’t take a lot to turn a game around. Composure is a big thing, and it seemed like when we did need a big defensive stop or a rebound, we got that."