The journey will begin for the Manchester Essex boys’ basketball team later this week, and if everything goes according to plan it should result in a rematch with a familiar foe on Saturday.
The Hornets finished the regular season with a 15-5 record and an enviable high seed in the MIAA Div. 4 tournament (ME is ranked 9th overall in the division). With that comes the benefit of a first-round bye and the opportunity to scout the opposition, and Manchester Essex boys’ basketball coach Tim St. Laurent had plans to check out the preliminary round matchup of Wahconah Regional and Upper Cape Cod RVT on February 19. The winner of that game would face the Hornets in the Round of 32 on March 1 (6:30 p.m., Manchester Essex Regional High School).
“It’s a three-hour drive, but it’s lucky being in the driver’s seat,” explains St.
Laurent. “You can look at film online, but you can’t tell anything about size and speed on film.”
If the higher seed prevails, the Hornets will face Wahconah (located in Dalton, MA, thus the three-hour drive) and hope to avenge a loss to the Warriors in the Elite Eight four years ago.
“If they’re good enough to be the 24 seed in the new state tournament, they’re pretty good,” St Laurent says of the Warriors, a team that finished under .500 (8-12).
If nothing else, Manchester Essex should be prepared for this first game in the tournament. The Hornets hosted Newburyport last week and faced Lynnfield at the start of this week in a pair of scrimmages against two of the top teams in the area, giving the team even more experience going against playoff-caliber opponents before the real games begin.
“It’s a CAL team that’s number 15 in Div. 3 and another strong one that we know pretty well,” says St. Laurent. “It’s a situation where those coaches and I get along great, and we can have them throw multiple variances at us, and we can throw multiple variances at them.”
It also doesn’t hurt that Manchester Essex ran the gauntlet and prevailed during the regular season. The Hornets won the Cape Ann League outright, earning the best record in both divisions, picking up wins over quality opponents like Georgetown and Hamilton-Wenham, and accomplishing a win over Lynnfield, the only team in the CAL Baker to do so.
“This year’s team winning the title was as thrilling as my first CAL title seven or eight years ago,” explains St. Laurent. “This was a tremendous accomplishment for a young team that didn’t have any seniors starting. This was one to be proud of with the underclassmen that we had.”
Those underclassmen have been crucial to the team’s success. John Chareas has been a scoring machine over the last few weeks of the season, recording multiple games in which he’s scored 25 or more points. Sophomore point guard Graham Lewis has been a revelation, racking up double-digit assists and points. Sophomore center Alex Ste. Marie has been a catalyst for this group all season.
“At practice, we say, ‘We play our best ball when Alex Ste. Marie, our sophomore center, is thriving,’” explains St. Laurent. “He gets better with every minute that goes by. He’s got an excellent work ethic and is tremendously coachable. When we are running our offense through him, we are tough to beat.”
While this is a young team, senior Jake Zschau has assumed the role of savvy veteran and team leader, a clutch performer who scored the game-winning shot with 10 seconds left against Pentucket to seal a regular-season victory.
“He’s hitting three, four threes a game and playing great defense,” St. Laurent says of Zschau. “The other three I’ve mentioned get a lot of press, but without Jake hitting big-time shots, we aren’t the same.”
High effort, rapid development, depth and talent have been the recipe all season long for the Hornets, and the hope is that it will continue to serve them well now that the postseason has begun.
“I think that we’re a young team, and young teams have struggles,” explains St. Laurent. “But the one thing that has carried over from previous years that the coaches have to be mindful of is you have to know how to win. These boys, from playing multiple sports and the culture that exists at Manchester, know how to win.”
