'There is nothing that means more than this': Tantasqua boys' basketball edges Millbury for Clark Large Schools crown

WORCESTER — The Tantasqua Regional boys’ basketball team lost to Millbury by 28 points last season and by 10 when the Southern Worcester County League rivals met in December.

But that setback early this season wasn’t a total loss.

“We sort of figured them out a little bit,” senior captain Colm McGrath said. “We knew their team from last year, who they had lost, and what they were now purposely doing.

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“In the second game this year (in January) we beat them by five, and that rivalry was really formed. So I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle down to the final shot, and that’s what it was.”

This game would be the 83rd Clark Tournament Large School championship.

And it was one that saw the sixth-seeded Warriors erase an 11-point halftime deficit and take their only lead since the opening minutes on a 3-pointer by James Sciaraffa with 20 seconds to play to secure a 44-42 victory Friday night before a packed house at the Kneller Athletic Center.

It’s the first Clark championship for Tantasqua, which was making its second straight appearance in the tournament and eighth overall following a long stretch during which it was ineligible for selection due to its large student body.

“There is nothing that means more than this,” McGrath said. “This is something we talk about at the beginning of every single year.”

The Warriors improved to 14-7 with their eighth win in the past nine games after starting the season 6-6.

Simply staying the course has been the key to the terrific turnaround with resilience and the players never wavering in their support of each other leading to an infusion of confidence.

“We’re all rowing the boat in the same direction and when you do that in high school it can be pretty powerful,” coach Scott Dion said.

After scoring the game’s first four points, the Warriors spent the rest of the first half rowing upstream as the Woolies (17-6) put together a 20-5 run with the Donnelly brothers, Kenny and Jimmer, each scoring eight points to open an 11-point lead.

The Warriors, though, ended the half on a high note as 6-foot-8 junior forward Elijah Webb drained a catch-and-shot 3-pointer off a feed from McGrath with 21 seconds to play to make it 28-17 at the break.

Webb then opened the third with reverse layup and a pair of 3s — the first off the right wing and the second out of the left pocket — and the deficit was five with 5:05 left in the third.

“It’s not a matter of me shooting the ball,” said Webb, who finished with a game-high 15 points in this defense-dominated tilt.

“It’s my teammates, too. My teammates are the ones giving me the ball in those positions, so I give all the credit to them.”

It was a two-possession game the rest of the way, one in which the Woolies scored 14 points in the second half, including three in the fourth quarter — on a three-point play by junior Mathias Waire. They were shut out over the final five minutes.

“We didn’t move the ball, and that’s what it came down to,” coach Jim Donnelly said after the Woolies lost here in the final for a second straight February. “We have a lot of talented players and we kind of didn’t move it enough and played into Tantasqua’s hands.

“They’re a very good defensive team, Coach Dion knows these guys, and they were just there when we tried to do some stuff on our own. That was probably the key to the game.”

The Warriors slowly, but surely chipped away at the deficit before finally pulling ahead when Sciaraffa launched a wide-open 3 from the left wing — with the Tantasqua student section behind him — that ripped through the net to close out the scoring.

Sciaraffa, who scored nine of his 13 points over the game’s final 12 minutes, was 0 for 3 from behind the arc to that point. And when he flicked his right wrist, he wasn’t sure if the shot was on target.

“I was praying,” Sciaraffa said, repeating himself for emphasis.

And when it went in?

“It felt great,” he said. “All the nerves going on, and I felt amazed.”

The Woolies got off two shots in the final 20 seconds, the first an in-and-out 3 by Donnelly and the second a driving layup by senior Anthony Phillip that was short.

Donnelly, who was under the weather and hadn’t been on a court since the Woolies’ semifinal win Sunday, finished with 14 points after scoring 21 and 22 in the first two meetings with the Warriors.

The 6-6 forward, who was defended by 5-11 senior Jack Rapose, was 1 for 7 from the field, including 1 of 4 on 3s, in the second half after going 4 for 6, including 1 for 4 behind the arc, in the first half.

“I was very proud of his effort and Rapose did a wonderful job on him defensively,” coach Donnelly said. “He battled him.”

—Contact Rich Garven at rgarven@telegram.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @RichGarvenTG.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Tantasqua battles back, edges Millbury for Clark Tournament Large Schools crown