FITCHBURG — After holding leads of nine and six points with five minutes left in Thursday’s game against Notre Dame, the Athol boys summer basketball team let one slip away, losing 57-53 in overtime.
“We played with six guys, they had 10” said Athol’s Dave King, who filled in as head coach for Thursday’s game. “(It was) humid, so we ran out of some energy. If we can press the whole time, that game is a different game. It’s probably a 20-point win for us, to be honest, but with the personnel that we have, we have to manage the game as much as possible.”
The loss moves Athol to 1-5 during the summer season and four wins out of tying for a playoff spot. Athol has five games left to make up the difference following next week’s mandatory bye week.
“It’s definitely a challenge and especially with six guys and when you don’t have time to practice,” said King. “Most of these kids are three-sport athletes and haven’t played competitive basketball since the winter, so it’s just good being out on the court and realizing you’re going to have ups and downs and you have to push yourself through them.”
Athol built a nine-point lead with less than five minutes left in the game only to see it slowly dwindle. Notre Dame strung together five straight points to move within four points and eventually tied the game at 49 with 56 seconds left.
Athol then missed two layups within the final minute, which sent the two teams to overtime.
With the game tied at 51 in overtime, Athol succumbed to fouls, sending Notre Dame to the line four times. Notre Dame connected on four out of eight free throws within the final two minutes of overtime. The only thing Athol could do was net a pair of free throws to bring the game to within 55-53 with five seconds left, but gave up two more fouls and two more free throws to end the game.
“We played better, we definitely played better than our last few games,” said Edwards. “But we should have won that. We just kept fouling, we had too many fouls. We kept letting them get easy free throws. They weren’t shooting threes or anything, they were just getting into the paint and we just kept fouling. If we stop fouling so much, we can close it out and we’ll be good.”
Edwards contributed a team-high eight rebounds and tied for a team-high 13 points along with Riley Payne.
“I didn’t even know that,” said Edwards. “I scored better today, but we’re getting better.”
Edwards contributed seven of Athol’s 10 points in the final six minutes of play. He connected on a 3-pointer to bring Athol’s lead to four at 42-38 and later on a layup to move the lead to nine at 47-38.
Athol led 26-19 at halftime. After going down 19-16 with five minutes and 41 seconds left in the first half, Athol strung together 10 straight points to move ahead.