Pembroke boys basketball uses big second quarter to beat Kearsarge in D2 title game (video)

DURHAM – The Pembroke Academy boys basketball team knew it had to attack the top players for Kearsarge on both ends of the floor if the Spartans were going to win Saturday’s Division II championship game.

That meant not only slowing down Noah Tremblay and Kyle Hernon whenever they had the ball, but also going at the Cougars’ duo when Pembroke had the ball.

The Spartans went at both early, and got what they wanted in the second quarter.

No. 3 Pembroke took advantage of first-half foul trouble for No. 9 Kearsarge, getting to the foul line often and keeping the Cougars scoreless for almost seven minutes on the way to a 47-35 win in the final at Lundholm Gymnasium at the University of New Hampshire.

Noah Cummings had eight of his game-high 18 points in the second quarter to lead Pembroke (21-1) on a 14-0 run over the final six-plus minutes of the opening half. The Spartans outscored Kearsarge 19-2 in the quarter and went into halftime with a 31-14 lead.

“The run in the second quarter was the difference in the game,” Pembroke coach Rich Otis said. “We were able to do our full court stuff, speed them up. We didn’t think they wanted to play that way and that’s how we wanted to play. We want to get up and down the floor, and we were fortunate in that second quarter to get steals and the tempo was our tempo. That was very key, the run and us speeding them up.”

Timothy Pitman hit two of his three 3-pointers in the second, as he finished with nine points, and Sean Menard added 16 points as the Spartans won their first title since winning back-to-back championships in 2013-14.

Tremblay and Hernon each finished with nine points before both fouled out in the fourth quarter, while Ben Carl also had nine points for the Cougars (13-9).

Down 21 points early in the fourth quarter, Kearsarge went on an 11-1 run to get the lead down to 43-32, but it was too much for the Cougars to overcome.

“To get in a hole like that, this team is too good,” Kearsarge coach Nate Camp said. “We needed to only be down four or five at halftime. I thought we did a good job in the second half. We went on a run and I’ll certainly remember this about this group, that they played with a lot of heart. When you’ve got limit minutes to some of those kids, it’s tough.”

Kearsarge got out to an early 5-2 lead but Tremblay picked up his second foul with 5:20 left in the opening quarter and went to the bench. Pembroke countered with an 8-0 run to go up 10-5 and Camp took a chance, putting Tremblay back in with 2:36 to go in the first.

The Cougars responded by ending the quarter on a 7-2 run to tie the game at 12 going into the second. Pembroke opened with a 3 by Pitman and a basket from Jake Lehoullier to go up five, and Tremblay answered with a layup to make it 17-14 Spartans.

But with 5:22 left in the half, Tremblay picked up his third foul, and after he came out, Pembroke started to pull away. Four straight free throws by Cummings put the Spartans up 23-14 and the senior hit a jumper to get the lead into double digits.

Pitman hit another 3 and Menard completed a three-point play with 1:10 to go in the second to put Pembroke up 31-14.

Hernon and Jak Jallah also got into foul trouble before the end of the quarter, as Kearsarge was called for 11 fouls in the first half. The Spartans went 9 of 12 from the free throw line in the opening half, and were 14 of 23 for the game.

“Tremblay and Hernon are as good a one-two punch as anybody in Division II, so we knew we had to stop them,” Otis said. “I thought (Tremblay) struggled for what he got all night and we kept Hernon off the glass. Our game plan was to attack those two and get them in foul trouble.”

While Pembroke struggled to score in the second half - it had eight points in both the third and fourth quarter - the Spartans had a big enough lead, they were able to fall back on their defense. Kearsarge had just seven points in the third and shot 22.2 percent from the field, trailing by 18 points at the end of the frame.

After a 3-pointer by Pitman to start the fourth gave Pembroke a 42-21 lead, Kearsarge was able to make things interesting with an 11-1 run, which included seven points from Carl. A layup by Tremblay made it 43-32, and after the teams traded baskets, it was still an 11-point lead for the Spartans with 1:28 to go.

"We locked down defensively," Cummings said. "Defense was really what did it. We got a few guys in foul trouble and we just tried to defend every minute of the game.

"That’s what won us a game. It was always defense that won us games this year, and when we didn’t do it, that’s when we let teams crawl back in, and we did it well for 32 minutes."