Herget race heating up

If the Dedham High boys basketball team is to entertain ideas of snaring a piece of the Herget Division title, Friday night’s game in Milton was a must-have contest.

The Marauders were coming off a frustrating loss last Tuesday in Natick in which Dedham mustered one field goal over the final 3:50 that left the squad just a game over .500 overall and a game below in the Bay State Conference.

For as tough as a pill that loss was to swallow, toppling the defending Division 2 state champions and three-time running league champions 61-52 at the Copeland Fieldhouse was all the more gratifying. The trio of Ryan Welch, Nick Walch and Cam Clifford combined for 42 points and the frontcourt rotation of Scott Murphy, Ryan Duane and Vinny Iarrobino limited the number of touches in the post for Wildcats center Emmanuel Hutcherson, who finished with 14 points on 4-of-10 shooting and 15 rebounds.

 “We got physical this week, our big men really stepped it up,” said Clifford following the Milton contest when he finished with 11 points and seven assists. “They all played tough.”

Dedham followed that up by knocking off Walpole 55-51 on Tuesday, overcoming a five-point deficit in the fourth quarter in a contest that would have simply wiped out all of the good karma from Friday had they lost to a squad with one conference win.

“We’re still in the hunt. We’re a game out of first place and I didn’t think that would be a possibility,” said Marauders coach Ed Hickey, whose squad is 5-4 in the conference, 7-4 overall, and trails Milton and Natick by a game heading into Braintree on Friday.

Nick Walch was the only player in double figures for the Marauders against the Rebels with 20 points.

Clifford gave Dedham the lead for good, driving straight down the middle of the length of the floor for a layup with 3:57 left and a 46-44 lead. It was also the last field goal of the night as Dedham closed the game by making 9-of-12 free throws.

Friday, the Marauders used a 2-3 zone to neutralize Hutcherson, keeping him at the top of the key for much of the game. While no Marauders were able to equal Hutcherson’s rebound total, Murphy finished with nine to go along with five points while Iarrobino added five rebounds from off the bench.

Welch was solid from beyond the arc once again, making 5-of-6 3-pointers, including back-to-back possessions in the opening minutes of the third quarter to help push a 31-24 halftime lead to 15 with a 10-2 run.

Milton’s size advantage, not utilized in the first half, started to take over in the third quarter as Hutcherson had consecutive chances for three-point plays (making one of the two) to provide a spark to his team and DJ Santos cut the Marauder lead to 43-39 by finishing a fourth-chance bucket.

Dave Sheehan, battling illness and bumped from the starting lineup, added a late bucket to push the Dedham lead to six entering the final eight minutes.

After struggling in the final few minutes with the game on the line Tuesday, the Marauders thrived three days later. Dedham opened the fourth with a 13-4 run to build the lead back to 15 as Welch connected on his fifth 3 of the night for a 58-43 lead with 3:04 remaining.

When Milton finally went to a full-court press out of necessity the Marauders did have trouble, but had already built up a big enough lead. A 1-for-9 showing from the free-throw line by the Wildcats in the final three minutes also aided the Marauders. Dedham was also without Welch for the last 1:23 and Clifford the last 29.6 having fouled out, but Milton was never able to get closer than eight.

“When we play our ‘A’ game we can compete with anybody, we’ve just got to finish some games,” said Hickey. “We struggled down the stretch a little bit tonight, if the score was close it might have been different outcome, but lucky we had enough of a cushion that a couple free throws and a couple turnovers didn’t hurt us.”

The Marauders assumed the lead for good late in the first quarter when Welch started a 13-0 run that spilled over into the second with a 3-pointer in the left corner off a feed from Clifford. Walch gave Dedham a 22-11 lead with 6:54 left in the first half with a pair of free throws to cap the run.

(Keith Pearson is Staff Writer for the Dedham Transcript. He can be reached at (781) 433-8371 or kpearson@cnc.com.)