Wilton rolls to quarters

Thursday, February 25, 2010

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WILTON – There was one matchup that Wilton-Lyndeborough coach Sean Young was worried about heading into Tuesday’s Class S boys basketball preliminary round game.

Who was going to guard Lisbon center Jamsie Myers when the Warriors’ big man, Steve Heck, wasn’t in the game?

Turned out, all that worrying was for nothing.

After sitting most of the first half in foul trouble, Heck was brilliant after halftime, scoring 16 of his game-high 23 points to help lead No. 7 W-L to a 66-57 win over No. 10 Lisbon. The win sends the Warriors into the quarterfinals, where they will go on the road to face No. 2 Newmarket on Friday.

Tory Rysnik added 14 points for the Warriors and played solid defense on Lisbon’s Jeff Clement, who scored 14 of his team-high 20 points in the fourth quarter. Adam Edmunds had 11 points for W-L (14-5) and Ryan Burke chipped in with 10 markers.

Although the Warriors had four players in double figures, it was their defense that controlled the game, starting with Heck’s ability to man the lane without picking up another foul in the second half.

“I realized I just needed to play straight up,” Heck said. “I had a huge height advantage over all of those kids, so I didn’t need to be jumping and leaning over them.”

Doing that led to a number of altered shots from the Panthers (10-9), including a handful of blocks by Heck. Most of those were on Myers, who scored just two points of his eight points while the two were on the floor at the same time.

“(Myers) was the matchup I was really concerned about because of how big he was,” Young said. “I thought the only guy that could really beat him off the block was Steve. I really needed to have Tory out top on Clement. He’s one of the better players in the state. Tory did a tremendous job.”

The Warriors had a seven-point lead when Heck picked up his third foul with a little more than five minutes remaining in the first half. Lisbon quickly made it a three-point game, with Myers scoring four points.

But back-to-back 3s by Edmunds made the lead nine and W-L led by seven at the break.

The Warriors opened the third quarter with a 7-0 run to push their lead to 14, but the Panthers used an 11-4 run of their own to pull with seven just before the fourth quarter.

W-L scored the first five points of the quarter to go back up by 12 and the Warriors still led by that many when the Panthers finally made their run with 3:25 left in the game.

Back-to-back 3-pointers by Clement and Dylan Chase, and an old-fashioned three-point play by Clement, cut the W-L lead down to 56-51 with 2:35 remaining. But the Warriors clamped down on defense and scored the next six points to go up 62-51, and put the game out of reach.

“The way the kids came out and played, I was so proud of them,” Young said. “Every guy that stepped on the court was tremendous. I like our chances a lot. We just need to keep attacking like we did (Tuesday).”