Nighthawks Finally Beaten But Ready To Rebound

By Andy Hutchison

After reeling off 11 consecutive wins to start the season, the Newtown High School boys’ basketball team finally stumbled, falling 80-72 in overtime at home to South-West Conference rival Masuk on Tuesday.

The Nighhawks nearly overcame a sloppy start with a spirited fourth-quarter comeback. Down 10 points with five minutes to play, the Nighhawks got to work and forced overtime. Just seconds into the extra session, however, a foul on Kevin Troy, in which he thought he drew a charge, resulted in not only a three-point play for Masuk, but also a technical foul on Troy. Masuk cashed in for a quick five points early in OT and never looked back, outscoring the Hawks 15-7 in the period.

“We never recovered from that,” Newtown Coach John Quinn said.

It was a game Newtown could have won if not for the performance of Masuk’s Steve Zazuri, who knocked down 42 points. They were also doomed by several missed shots on open looks and the team’s normally stifyling team defense wasn’t its usual clamp-down self.

“The kids are really disappointed. They knew they didn’t play well. It’s going to happen over a 20-game season,” Quinn said. “We were just cold. But to their credit, they beat us — it’s no excuse.”

Troy had 22 points, Mike Maher had 16, and PJ Cochran added 12 in the losing cause.

Masuk improved to 8-4 (2-3 in the SWC) and Newtown stands at 11-1 (5-1). With eight regular season games remaining and potentially three SWC Tournament clashes, another 11-game winning streak would be a most memorable one.

“Our next 11-game winning streak would mean we’re the SWC champs,” Quinn pointed out.

The Nighthawks will try to get back to their winning ways when they visit Pomperaug Friday at 7 pm.

The Hawks didn’t fall into a trap of looking beyond its next opponent, but just didn’t put it all together against Masuk. Considering the Nighthawks’ sheer domination against eight-win New Milford last Friday, and the fact the team has won seven games by double-digit margins, however, you could not really fault the players for looking ahead and thinking this could be their year to win the South-West Conference.

The players have stayed focused, however, and, undoubtedly, that has led to the overall success. Host Newtown dominated New Milford in all aspects of last Friday’s 70-43 triumph before a raucous, packed gymnasium crowd.

This had the makings of a pretty close game — at least on paper anyway. New Milford was 8-2 and Newtown 10-0. But after spotting the visitors an early 3-0 lead, the Nighthawks went on 19-5 run to end the first quarter and never looked back. What’s more, the Nighthawks held New Milford, which averages about 70 points per game, to its lowest offensive performance of the campaign.

“This was supposed to be a challenging game for us,” said Cochrane, who scored 14 points. “We thought we were going to be in for a tough game.”

Cochrane pointed out that New Milford’s only losses coming into the contest were to conference leader Kolbe Cathedral and FCIAC powerhouse Bridgeport Central.

“That’s a very good team that has been scoring a lot of points. I see them as a top two or three team in the conference and I was very concerned about this game,” Quinn said.

There was no reason for concern after the first couple of minutes. A Maher three-pointer, part of an 11-0 run early in the first quarter, prompted a New Milford timeout, but Newtown never let its opponent regroup. The Nighthawks shot lights-out in the first quarter — almost literally. A half-court heave at the buzzer hit a low-hanging ceiling light; all of the high percentage shots seemed to fall for Nighthawks. The offensive fireworks continued in the second quarter with Dan Smith setting up his twin brother Jason Smith for an crowd-raising ally-oop and a 25-10 cushion less than 2:30 into the second half.

Even with a 19-point third-quarter lead, Newtown tightened the screws defensively and applied a full-court press to sustain the pressure.

Tough defense not only stops the opponent’s offense, but it sparks Newtown’s fast break — as it did time and again on Friday. That style of play has been the team’s bread and butter throughout the season. Teamwork — lots of it — is another trademark of this group.

“We like to run. We like to get out in the open floor. We’re all unselfish — we hit the open man,” said Maher, who led all scorers with 20 points in the win over New Milford.

Maher was one of three scorers in double figures — the others being Cochrane and Troy (12 points). Dan Smith added nine points. Seniority is another strong suit for the Nighthawks; all five starters are seniors.

“Everybody’s unselfish. Nobody cares about the points. That’s what makes this team so good,” Cochrane said. “We were able to run on a pretty good team,” Cochrane added.

This Friday’s contest, in light of the result of the first meeting of the season between the locals and Pomperaug, should be a tight one. Newtown prevailed 69-64 in overtime back on December 19.

Still left on the slate are Brookfield, Weston, Stratford, Immaculate, Notre Dame-Fairfield, Kolbe Cathedral, and Bunnell. Although some of these games look like sure wins (Weston and Immaculate have less than a handful of wins between them), there is a reason the games are played. Kolbe is another tough conference foe and Bunnell had been near the top of the standings all year long.

“We’re trying to take it one game at a time,” Maher said. “We’re not looking ahead to February or March.”

Taking things a game at a time is particularly important for an unbeaten team, Quinn said before his team lost to Masuk.

“These kids are so focused, they’ve bought into it,” the coach added.

Quinn said that, despite the team’s focus on game-to-game task at hand, the goal of winning the SWC title is in place. It would be the first conference championship since Quinn took over as coach 12 years ago.

“We have that capability and potential,” Quinn said.