I can’t even fathom how excited the Falmouth High School boys’ basketball team must be right now as they eat their pregame meal at The Burrito Place in East Falmouth. How do you even make it through a day of school when you know that at 6 PM — less than 24 hours from now — you’ll be playing at The Boston Garden? It’s got to be mind-numbing, but it’s reality for the Clippers.
Tickets are available at Falmouth High School for $8. Tickets at TD Boston Garden will cost $13.
Personally I’m pretty psyched about the big game. I know nothing about Salem, other than that they were the No. 7 seed in the north and got hot at the right time. They have two scorers and they like to get up and down the court.
Salem probably thinks that they’re a team of destiny, but so does Falmouth. Someone ends tomorrow night with heart-break while someone else is elated and earns a trip to the D2 state championship game.
The tournament has been quite a ride for Falmouth. I honestly think they played one bad game, the first one against Dennis-Yarmouth. It was uninspired. They won by 14, but went through the motions against a team they had already beaten twice.
Against Duxbury they turned it up a notch. Then against Whitman-Hanson they just shot the lights out and stormed by the Panthers, winning by 37.
But last night was something else entirely. Last night was a war, a game that didn’t see a lot of points scored, but saw two teams that gave every bit of effort they could muster.
The kids in Milton right now are asking themselves about every shot they missed. They’re wondering if they’d tried a little harder on one defensive stand if that would have been the difference. They’re not focused on a big, 19-win, season, but one one loss.
And that’s how it will be for another team tomorrow. The hardest thing about the tournament is that only one team ends its year with a victory. Everyone else leaves wondering what if?
I’ll be surprised if the Clippers aren’t still alive after tomorrow night. I try to remain somewhat neutral, since I’m a member of the media and all, but I have watched this team all year. They know how to win, and they’re really playing the best they know how right now.
Heading to the tournament the one thing I worried about was whether or not they’d be able to win a close game that went to the wire. If you look at the games they’d won all year long, almost all of them were by double digits. They’re good at running away from teams, but close games have been difficult. They lost a tight one to Barnstable, a team they should have beaten. They lost a close one to Weymouth, on a night where they just played bad. They lost an overtime game to Portsmouth (RI) early in the year, when they just couldn’t hit a shot. They lost an OT game to Taunton, on the last night of the regular season, and that was one that they could have won too.
But in the biggest spot, against a team that had won it all a year ago, they found a way to win when it mattered the most. Everything was on the line, and they delivered. It was exciting, heart-pounding and everything that is good about sports.
When the school year began people asked me which team I was most looking forward to watching. Football was the easy answer, and the hockey team is always a good watch. But I said the boys’ hoops team. I said that I thought that if they had a few breaks that they were legitimate state championship contenders.
Here we are, 19 wins later, on the eve of playing in the state Final Four at the biggest court in New England. Larry Bird played there. Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo and Kevin Garnett play there now. The 2008 Celtics won the championship on that court right there.
Will the Clippers come through like the ’08 Celts? Well, like Garnett said, “anything is possible.”
Possible, do-able, attainable. It’s there for the grasping, all they have to do is go take it now.
Good luck Clippers. You don’t have to worry about doing the town proud, because it already is. Go make yourselves some memories that will make you smile when you’re old.
“Pain is temporary, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever.”
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
