Murphy’s Cavs get the best of old boss

Friday, March 5, 2010

Photo by JOE MARCHILENA Merrimack Valley's Jordan Filion tries to keep up with Hollis/Brookline's Katie Stopera.

Enlarge

Photo by JOE MARCHILENA Hollis/Brookline's Kelly Morgan puts up a shot over Merrimack Valley's Cassidy John during Monday's Class I preliminary round game. The Cavaliers won, 61-34.

Enlarge

Photo by JOE MARCHILENA H/B's Alicia Papineau goes in for a layup while Merrimack Valley's Megan Hardiman tries to defend.

Enlarge

Photo by JOE MARCHILENA Merrimack Valley's Jordan Filion tries to keep up with Hollis/Brookline's Katie Stopera.

Enlarge

HOLLIS – There was one message Bob Murphy sent to his Hollis/Brookline High School girls basketball team Monday night.

The coach wanted to have practice on Tuesday.

That message was understood.

The fourth-seeded Cavaliers opened up an early lead and never looked back, knocking off 13th-seeded Merrimack Valley, 61-34, in a Class I preliminary game. H/B moves on to the quarterfinals, where it will face No. 5 St. Thomas, which defeated John Stark 41-31, on Thursday in Hollis.

“I told them in locker room before the game, I want practice tomorrow and they all knew what I meant,” Murphy said. “We have practice.

“I was very happy right from the get-go. They (Merrimack Valley) have a very high-pressure, man-to-man defense. We expected that. That’s what they’re known for.”

The Cavs handled the pressure early on and used their own defensive abilities to force the Pride into 13 turnovers in the first half. A number of those miscues H/B turned into baskets on the other end, as the Cavs made 12 field goals from inside the paint in the first half.

Sultana Svirk led the way with 14 points and 13 rebounds for H/B (16-3) while Kelly Morgan had nine points and Alicia Papineau added nine points off the bench. Merrimack Valley’s Megan Hardiman led all scorers with 15 points, but no one else had more than six for the Pride (10-9).

“I thought we would give them a better challenge than we did,” Merrimack Valley coach Joe Raycraft said. “They’re a good team, but at the beginning, we had some shots that we missed and they got up on us.

“We turned the ball over more than I expected that we would turn the ball over. They did nothing different than what we’ve seen and after 21 games, you shouldn’t, but we did make those mistakes. Give the credit to them. They deserved to win.”

H/B held an 11-point lead as time ran down in the first quarter, but Hardiman hit a 3-pointer with 2.5 seconds left to make it an eight-point game.

But from there, the Cavs controlled both ends of the floor, going on a 17-0 run to lead 35-10 with 3:04 left before halftime. Papineau and Morgan both had four points each during the run.

Hardiman hit a layup with 2:17 to go in the quarter to break Merrimack Valley’s scoreless streak, and the Pride would cut the lead to 13 with just under six minutes to go in the third quarter, but could get no closer.

“I just talked about control,” Murphy said of what he told the team. “We had the lead and they’ve got to fight back. You guys are going to stay in the game if you control the basketball as a team. If you don’t, I’m going to have to take you out. I think they came to the realization that I was going to do that. All of a sudden they started dropping back and I looked up and the lead was 20 points again.”

Murphy was able to get all 12 of his players into the game and all but one scored.

The Cavs will play in the quarterfinals for the first time since moving up to Class I in 2003. Thursday’s game will be just the third home playoff game the girls team has had since then – H/B was the seventh seed in 2008 when it lost to Portsmouth at home in the opening round.

“Bob does a great job,” said Raycraft, who is in his second year with the Pride and was the athletics director at Merrimack who first hired Murphy to coach girls basketball there in 1991. “He did a great job this year, and he did a good job at Merrimack.”

With their teams not playing during the regular season, Murphy and Raycraft spent time talking about other opponents in Class I throughout the year.

“He’d call me, I’d call him,” Murphy said “I just thank God I didn’t send him film of us. Then he would have dissected that. We did chat back and forth about what we thought and then here we are playing him.”

H/B will play St. Thomas at 7 p.m. on Thursday. The winner will advance to the semifinals on March 9 at Southern New Hampshire University.