St. Thomas boys basketball uses the long ball to knock off Campbell in D3 playoffs

LITCHFIELD – They live by the 3 and sometimes die by it.

On Friday night, the St. Thomas High School boys basketball team did the former, and that was bad news for Campbell in the Division III quarterfinals.

Saints senior Finley De Tolla hit a tiebreaking 3-pointer with 41.2 seconds left, one of 14 treys by No. 5 St. Thomas, and that was the big difference in 71-66 win.

As a result, one of the best seasons in Campbell boys hoop history – the No. 4 Cougars' 15-2 regular season was their best regular-season record ever – comes to a sudden end. The Cougars looked like a Final Four team all winter long, but instead it will be defending champion St. Thomas (15-3) moving on to face No. 1 Belmont in the semifinals Wednesday night at Bow High School.

While De Tolla hit the big shot and had 19 points, Cole McClure had a whopping 32 points to lead the Saints. The Cougars (16-3) were without one of their better defensive players, Luke Delia, whom his coach said was "away" and thus unavailable.

“They hit a lot of 3s,” Campbell coach Justin DiBenedetto said. “We did as good as you can do playing straight man on Cole. Obviously, we were down our best defender in Luke. It killed us. Something like that is the difference in a game like this, just one extra super fast defender. A game of runs, and that's the way it goes.

“St. Thomas is the best team in the division. I thought we were, but they beat us.”

The Saints did it by shooting the lights out of the gym when it counted the most.

“That's who we are, though, we're small,” St. Thomas coach Dave Morissette said. “We have guards, we shoot it, that's how we have won this year. And I feel we have the best player in the state (McClure), or one of the best players.”

As DiBenedetto said, it was a game of runs. An 11-0 Campbell run gave them a 19-14 lead after one and the Cougars were up nine in the second quarter when Logan Rice (team-high 28 points) got called for his third foul and St. Thomas grabbed a 35-32 halftime advantage after that.

It was 55-50 after three, and the Saints were beginning to pull away, looking in good shape up 66-58 with just over two minutes to play. But two Rice free throws and layups by Cayden Deleon, Jayden Medina and lastly Jack Breton (19 points) incredibly tied the game at 66 with 1:12 to play.

“They're all dead tired, working their butts off,” DiBenedetto said. “We've been in positions like that all year and we've battled back. On any given night we could have beaten anyone, Division I through III. There's a lot of fight on this team.”

On St. Thomas' next possession, a missed Saints shot got tipped out to De Tolla, who nailed the trey.

“He's a senior,” Morissette said. “That's what seniors do. Pretty good for a lacrosse player.”

“It was a tough dagger and it got us pretty good,” DiBenedetto said. “They missed the shot, the ball just tips to them a wide open 3. It was just their night. They scored eight points on layups and the rest of their points were foul shots and 3s.”

McClure didn't hit a 3-pointer in the second half thanks to the defense of Cougar sophomore Jayden Medina. But he still had 13 points over the final two quarters and his team survived the Cougar run. He hit two free throws with 13.2 ticks left to clinch things.

“We're so connected,” McClure said. “Basketball's a game of runs, we went on a couple of runs, they went on that crazy run. But I knew we had it in us. We're calm, we stayed poised, and that's how we got the win (Friday).”

"Best game in the state,” Morissette said. “I have tremendous respect for (Campbell) and I wish this game was later on in the tournament.”

And DiBenedetto felt he had the team to go further in the tourney.

“I'm very proud of them,” DiBenedetto said. “Best regular season in Campbell history, 15-2, we never reached those marks even on teams I played on when we went to the finals. I love this team.”

Tom King writes for the Nashua Telegraph.