St. John's Falls in EMass Quarters

St. John's Falls in EMass Quarters

March 1, 2014

At Catholic Memorial High School, the Boys Bantams took on 4th seeded St. Agatha of Milton in the Quarterfinals of the EMass State Tournament. Led by 8 straight points to start the second half, St. Agatha was able to pull away for the victory. 

St. John's found itself in an early hole and it took them nearly four minutes before Kyle Fitzgerald found an open Justin Ratner to get on the board. St. John's slowly crawled back. Gabe D'Silva made one of two free throws and then converted an offensive rebound to cut the St. Agatha lead to one. Justin Ratner's jumper at the 9:16 mark gave St. John's its first lead of the game at 7-6. St. Agatha answered back with a five point run to retake the lead. Michael Fitzgerald countered with an offensive putback for St. John's and Ethan Weisse scored on a fast break but St. John's could not come up with a defensive stop and trailed by four with 5:57 left in the half. But down the stretch, St. John's couldn't make a field goal. Oscar Hale and Kyle Fitzgerald each made a free throw and Ethan Weisse made 3 of 4 from the foul line as St. John's entered the half trailing by a score of 23-16. 

Nothing went right for St. John's early in the second half. St. Agatha converted turnovers and missed shots for four easy baskets to pull ahead 31-16. St. John's finally got on the board on an Ethan Eicheler drive and then things got interesting. In the confusion of an out of bounds play, a St. Agatha player inadvertantly scored on his own basket. St. John's capitalized on the mistake with two quick Justin Ratner baskets to make it 31-24. On the next inbounds, Anthony Rakauskas stole a pass and went in for a basket to cut the lead to 31-26 with 6:27 remaining in the game. St. Agatha finally settled down and got back on the scoreboard, after a made free throw by St. John's,Gabe D'Silva kept it a four point game by making two free throws of his own at the 4:55 mark to make it 33-29. St. Agatha came out of a timeout and went into a half court trap. Back to back steals sent them on an 8-0 run to take the lead to double digits. D'Silva tapped in a miss to cut the lead to 41-31 with 2:08 to go, but it would be too little to late. A late 3-pointer by Cole Keough was all St. John's had left as they fell 45-34. 

For St. John's, Gabe D'Silva led them with 9 points and 12 rebounds. Justin Ratner added 6 points and Anthony Rakauskas and Ethan Weisse each chipped in with 5 points. Oscar Hale grabbed six rebounds in the season ending loss.

It was a highly successful season for the Boys Bantams. They needed to win 70% of their games just to make it to the EMass State Tournament. They did it with just two returning players from last year’s State Tournament run. Gabe D’Silva averaged 7.2 points per game and grabbed 136 rebounds to go with 43 blocked shots. The two returning players were Anthony Rakauskas(6.2 points per game) and Justin Ratner(5 points per game). Oscar Hale had 107 rebounds while averaging 5.1 points per game. The future looks bright for St. John’s as they will  return six players from this years team.