LONGMEADOW — Brody Harrington isn’t the leading scorer on the Longmeadow boys basketball team. He’s not even in the top five in scoring this season for the Lancers, yet he affects the game in a plethora of ways.
The senior serves as a point forward for the team, ultimately stemming from being the Lancers quarterback throughout the fall season.
On Friday night in the Western Mass. Class A quarterfinals, Harrington showed his vision off to help No. 4 Longmeadow drain a season-best 16 three-pointers on the way to a 79-45 victory over No. 5 Amherst.
“I’ve always played basketball this way,” Harrington said. “My main goal is to rebound, find the open guy, bring energy and play good defense.”
Harrington contributed to the three-point barrage with a career-high two triples of his own. He hadn’t hit a 3-pointer until Jan. 30, but since then has hit a triple in five of the last six games.
“[Brody] leads by example every day,” Lancers head coach Pat Murphy said. “He’s always making the right decisions, and he may not score for a week, and it doesn’t matter to him or his life. He wants to make good basketball plays. He wants to get rebounds. He took a charge tonight; he does all the little things that make our team good.
“He’s our most valuable player. The games that we struggle in, he’s in foul trouble, and the games that we’re good in, like tonight, he’s locked in and making every play.”
A back-and-forth first quarter was highlighted by Alex Sverrison with six points in the frame, while Amherst star guard Mitchell Carey had a pair of triples and eight points. Carey ended with 22 points on the night and is averaging 23.1 points per game on the season.
Up 21-18 in the second quarter, Longmeadow started to take over, and so did Jackson Passonno. The sophomore scored seven points in the quarter, and sparked a 10-0 run to force a Hurricanes timeout. Amherst fought back to get within eight, but Longmeadow ended the half on a 7-0 run led by two assists and a bucket from Harrington.
“My teammates trust me enough to pass me the ball, so just have to let it fly,” Harrington said.
Joe Martinez kept the Lancers rolling out of the half with five points unanswered, and had three triples in the third quarter. Everything was falling for Longmeadow, and Murphy loved to see it.
“We were much better motivated and prepared for the game, and especially since they embarrassed us on our court early on in the season,” Murphy said. “Our kids really took offense to that situation, and it showed tonight with their effort and attitude. All night we talked about how we had to stop their big three. They had three guys that could score the basketball. We had to stop them, and we did.”
Passonno put the game to bed in the fourth with nine points, all on threes. He had 22 points on the night, and has been on a heater from deep recently, averaging over four triples per game in the last four contests.
“Jackson has been a fantastic addition to our group,” Murphy said.” He didn’t play last year, came back out this year, and just is the instant offense off the bench. He can shoot the basketball, he can go to the hoop. We’re starting to get him to do some other things and that makes us a very tough basketball team.”
The Lancers will face Pope Francis in the WMass semifinals at 6 p.m. on Monday. It’ll be a rematch from when they lost to the Cardinals by 24 points back on Jan. 21.
“All the credit to Pope Francis for the way they played that game. But we did not give a good account of who we are,” Murphy said. “It’s funny to say we had a come to Jesus moment in their locker room built by God. I talked to these young men, and said, ‘Who do you want to be? What kind of team do you want to be? You want to be the team that just got your butts kicked at Pope Francis? Or do you want to be something else?’ And since that game, I think we’ve made a turn, and we’re a different team than they played four weeks ago, and hopefully Monday night, we can go in there and make some noise.”
