Griffins cap historic season by repeating as provincial champs

BY JOHN DECOSTE

NovaNewsNow.com

The verdict was in doubt until the final seconds, but the Horton Griffins have achieved their goal of repeating as NSSAF Division 1 provincial boys’ basketball champions.

In front of a noisy full house in their home gym, the Griffins survived a last-minute scare to hold on for a 78-76 victory over the Citadel Phoenix Saturday in Greenwich.

With the win, Horton (42-0) successfully capped an undefeated season, winning their 64th consecutive game dating back to Dec. 29, 2006. It also marks the first time since 1968-1969 that a Horton boys’ team has won back-to-back provincial titles.

Trailing by 11 with four minutes to play, Citadel dug deep, riding some clutch three-point shooting to pull to within one on Duane Gero-Carvery’s four-point play with 23 seconds on the clock.

After Ellis Ffrench hit one of two free throws to make it 78-76, the Phoenix had three chances to tie, but Thomas Doolittle missed a pair of foul shots. A Citadel layup attempt was blocked out of bounds, and the clock ran out on a super effort by the Halifax school.

Prior to the final four minutes, the Griffins looked to be in control of the game thanks to a team effort led, as usual, by Ffrench. The talented senior had 23 of his game-high 35 points in the second half, including four three-pointers and seven straight free throws.

Pat Riley added 13 points and Jeremy Dunn 11 for Horton, which led 19-16 after one quarter, 37-33 at halftime and 58-50 after three quarters.

Gero-Carvery finished with 27 points for Citadel, many of them a result of long-range shooting. Eamon Morrissey added 15 and Doolittle and Marquis Clayton 12 apiece.

“They gave us everything we could handle,” Griffins’ head coach Tim Kendrick said of the Phoenix, whom Horton had not played this season prior to Saturday’s final.

“I didn’t think we played particularly well at times, but the mark of a good team is the ability to ‘win ugly’. We played ‘D’ when we needed to, we made shots when we needed to, we were great at the foul line, and we got a really big 35 points from Ellis.”

Kendrick pointed to “a real team effort” all season. “We felt there were two things that could derail us – complacency and selfishness. We got a couple of wakeup calls about complacency along the way, but there were no signs of selfishness all season.”

For his part, Ffrench, who scored 109 points in Horton’s three tournament games, felt the team’s success was a function of “staying focused, not taking anything for granted, and working hard every time out.

“Citadel is a good team, and they brought their ‘A’ game today,” he said. “We definitely didn’t expect to go undefeated, but we worked hard all year and it worked out for us.”