TURNERS FALLS — Hosting the Massachusetts Vocational Athletic Director Association Boys Small School semifinal game on Thursday, the expectations were high for the Franklin Tech boys basketball team.
Taking on No. 3 Old Colony, the No. 2 Eagles came out flying, but trailed 29-28 at the half. In the third quarter, the visiting Cougars took over the game, outscoring Tech 18-8 in the quarter, resulting in a 62-50 Eagle loss.
Old Colony (18-4) moves on to play the winner of South Shore and Minuteman in the Vocational championship today.
“They’re a good team,” Eagle coach Tim Artus said. “They’re athletic, they’re quick. We needed to clean up our rebounding better than we did. If we had handled the boards better we would have been all right. We made some adjustments on defense, it stopped the bleeding, but it didn’t get us back into it.”
Though Franklin Tech (14-7) had the size advantage inside, it wasn’t able to take advantage of it. The Eagles gave up multiple offensive rebounds, which led to second-chance points for the Cougars, which helped them separate in the second half.
“For being an undersized team, they did a really good job on the boards,” Artus said. “They got a lot more rebounds than I thought they should have based on what I was looking for out of our team.”
Bailey Young led Franklin Tech with 15 points, with Garret Cole adding in 13 points. Ryan Artus knocked in two 3-pointers to finish with eight points in the loss.
Hunter Soares scored a game-high 17 points for Old Colony, while Jarret Taylor added 13 points and Caden Letendre had 11 points.
The Eagles got out to their early lead on the back of Young. The senior scored nine points in the first quarter, knocking home four shots and a free throw, giving Tech an 18-13 lead after eight minutes.
Following a basket by Ryan Bergmann early in the second quarter, the Cougars went on a 7-0 run to take a 22-20 lead midway through the quarter.
Letendre and Soares got to the rim for baskets to close out the second quarter to send the Eagles into the halftime locker room trailing.
Both teams were feeling each other out in the first half, having not seen each other in person, only on film.
“We watched some film on them,” Artus said. “What’s on film and what actually is happening in person can be different. I imagine there was some time to feel them out, but the first quarter was one of our better quarters. I don’t think we came out of the gate slow; what happened was the adjustments we tried to make didn’t work as well as we wanted them to.”
In the third quarter, Old Colony began attacking the rim hard, putting pressure on the Franklin Tech defense.
The Cougars didn’t go on one big run to extend their lead, but went on a series of small 5-0 runs to take control of the game. They also got to the line to shoot 10 free throws in the third quarter alone, making six of them.
On offense, the Eagles struggled with the extended pressure the Old Colony defense was showing, which led to turnovers.
“The adjustments we were making were things we normally execute,” Artus said. “They’ve got us to this point in the season. It’s a matter of they didn’t get executed as well as we wanted them to. I have zero complaints about effort, they gave everything they had. Things we tried to do just didn’t work tonight.”
There was no quit in Franklin Tech, who made a series of runs in the fourth quarter to cut the deficit to single digits. Cole scored six of his points in the fourth, but the Cougars had an answer any time the Eagles got within striking distance to keep a comfortable lead.
Franklin Tech awaits their seeding in the Western Mass Div. 4 tournament, which will be revealed on Saturday.