BRAINTREE — It wasn’t the night — or season — that Braintree boys basketball, led by coach David Wall and senior Ethan Elie, envisioned back in November, but as the star senior walked off the court Friday night for one of the final times following a 53-46 loss to Norwell, Wall had a simple message.
“I owe you everything,” Wall said.
Wall, in his first year at the helm for the Wamps, had his work cut out for him as Braintree returned just one player who received meaningful minutes last season in Elie. But if you were ever going to kickstart a program with one player, Elie is about as good as you’re going to find.
“It would have been easy for him to, just like, take a day off, it’s frustrating right?” Wall said of Elie. “Frustrating for him. I asked him to do a lot, and he shows up every day. He’s the hardest worker in practice. He competes hard throughout the game, covers the other team’s best guy and he’s our leading scorer. He does everything.”
With the loss Braintree dropped to 7-12 and will not qualify for the state tournament, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell that with the fire Elie played with on Friday night. The forward competed for every last second as his high school career began to fade, but he made every one of those seconds count.
“I wish I could have gotten him a few more wins,” Wall said. “But this type of experience, I guess, is invaluable.”
Elie scored a game-high 28 points, with 19 coming during a second-half comeback attempt that fell short in the final minutes.
After trailing by as many as 12 points in the third, it was Elie whose tenacious ability to plow through defenders and convert down low sparked the Wamps en route to cutting the deficit to just five in the fourth. The forward did have a chance to cut it to a single possession, but a missed floater was the last gasp as Norwell tightened its grip on its 14th win of the season.
The fourth quarter stretch was symbolic of most of Braintree’s games this winter. It often found itself in a one-possession game in the fourth, but just couldn’t find enough ways to make more plays when it mattered most.
“That’s a frustrating thing, man, we have been in every single game to the three, four-minute mark when we can’t get that last surge, execute, whatever you want to call it,” Wall said. “I gotta think that the experience of it helps us turn the corner in the future.”
Despite the season not going the way Elie and the Wamps had wanted, it hasn’t broken an intangible that Wall sees in Elie that separates him from just being another good basketball player — he’s also a great person.
“You won’t find a single person in this building that has anything negative to say about him,” Wall said. “He goes and fist pounds, handshakes, talks to everybody. Every teacher in this building loves them.
“Honestly, it sounds too good to be true, but that’s who he is. It’s crazy.”
Braintree and Elie will take the court one last time on Monday when it welcomes in Plymouth South for its regular season finale. Tipoff is set for 12 p.m.
