Thornton tops Hollis Brookline in double OT at Chick-fil-A basketball tournament

NASHUA - Mike Soucy stood outside the locker rooms at Nashua High School South and wondered for a moment out loud.

"I think we won that game three times," the Hollis Brookline High School boys basketball coach said of his team's 73-66 double overtime loss to Thornton Academy Saturday afternoon in the semifinals of the Chick-fil-A Holiday Tournament. The Cavaliers came close to winning a handful of times, and also looked on the way to guaranteed defeat on more than one occasion.

"I thought that was an awesome game to be a part of for both teams," Thornton coach Bob Davies said. "They executed down the stretch and we did, too. We had a couple of mental lapses there, but in the second overtime, when we got the lead, we were good."

Jeff Gelinas scored a game-high 23 points, including a game-tying basket to force a second overtime, and Quinn Richardson-Newton added 22 points, three of those on a game-tying 3 to force the first overtime.

HB got 18 points from Connor Walsh, 17 points from PJ Flaum and 16 points - all after halftime - from Tim Rencken. But the Cavs struggled at the free throw line, shooting 10 of 19, while Thornton was 32 of 34 from the stripe.

"We've preached that, that at some point missed free throws are going to cost us a game and that's exactly what happened," Soucy said. "Those opportunities, you can't leave on the board."

Thornton got off to a hot start, going up 21-7 at the end of the first quarter, but HB came back. Early in the third quarter, the Cavs had the lead, but by the end of it, the Trojans had taken it back. HB was up three in the final seconds, when Richardson-Newton hit a game-tying 3-pointer with 1.8 seconds left on the clock. The Cavs had a chance for the lead, but Rencken's three-quarter court shot hit the rim and bounced off, sending the game to overtime.

HB got out to a five-point lead in the first overtime, but a three-point play by Gelinas cut that to two with 1:39 left. When Thornton's Malcolm Dopwell was whistled for a foul and drew a technical foul, the Cavs had a chance to put the game away.

But HB made just one of the four free throws. Rencken scored on the ensuing possession to push the lead back up to five, but Thornton's Evan Wright hit a 3 with 34 seconds left, and after an HB turnover, Gelinas tied the game with a layup.

"Usually, it's a wide-open 3, but I can drive off it," Gelinas said of the play. "You have to read it and if guys come at you, the lane is usually wide open. If they get stuck behind the screens, that's when you shoot."

Rencken again found the ball in his hands for a final shot, but his half-court heave caromed off the rim again.

"Let's go play," Soucy said of what the message to his team was heading to the second overtime. "Both times it led to another opportunity to play. Having been through it before, where we made one of those to win, you know it can happen."

The game was still tied at 62 with 1:57 left when Gelinas hit a 3-pointer to break the tie. That started Thornton on an 11-4 run to end the game, with the Trojans' final eight points coming at the free throw line.

While the loss stung, Soucy was proud to see his players battle back from such a big deficit in the first half.

"We made a commitment to guarding, which if you think about, we're down 14 in the first quarter and you don't know where it's going," he said. "Then we hold them to four free throws in the second quarter. That's the type of defense we're capable of playing, but we have to commit to it every second of the game.

"They're going to learn a lot from this. Better here than in March."