HADLEY — Nothing like a No. 8 seed against a No. 9 seed for high last-second drama.
Hopedale’s Andrew Deppe made both ends of a one-and-one with 14.9 seconds left Tuesday to give the Blue Raiders a 61-59 lead. That left Hopkins plenty of time to respond, and senior Andrew Ciaglo did just that, canning a deep straightaway 3-pointer with 1.8 seconds on the clock, to lift the Golden Hawks to a pulsating 62-61 victory in the boys’ Division 5 Round of 16 at Reed Memorial Gymnasium.
Hopkins (17-5), which trailed by nine points with just over three minutes left and still by six with less than 90 seconds to go, moved ahead as the eighth seed to a state quarterfinal at top-seeded Taconic (19-4) Friday at 5 p.m. in Pittsfield.
“It wasn’t looking good, but we believed in ourselves,” said Ciaglo, who scored 21 points with four 3-pointers. “I knew we were going to at least make it a game, make one play at a time, and get stops. We’re not going to let the other team dictate the game in the last 30 seconds, and no one gets the last shot but us. Coach and my teammates trusted me with the ball in my hands at the end of the game, and I just had to go make a play.”
Fellow senior Colin Earle paced the Hawks with 28 points. Deppe, a 6-4 junior, matched Earle with 28 for Hopedale, while Steve Marchionni and Oliver Radcliffe each had 13 for the No. 9-seeded Blue Raiders (18-6).
Hopkins fell down 19-4 out of the gate, as Radcliffe, Deppe and Marchionni each hit early threes. Deppe had nine points in the game’s first four minutes. The Hawks closed to within 22-13 at the end of the first quarter, but Hopedale ran back out to a 14-point edge at 32-18 halfway through the second. Ciaglo’s trey then got Hopkins started on a 7-0 run to close out the half, with the hosts down by seven, 32-25.
The halftime break didn’t slow down the Hawks any, as their run ballooned to 16-0 with the first nine points of the third. Earle’s runner from left of the lane gave Hopkins its first lead, 34-32, with 5:45 remaining. From there, the game seesawed with the Hawks in front 43-40, then Hopedale got the last five of the quarter on a trey by Deppe and a dotted-line jumper by Marchionni for a 45-43 Raider lead.
While Hopkins struggled through a stretch of only two field goals in over seven minutes, the Blue Raiders opened up some space to lead 58-49 with 3:05 on the clock, following Radcliffe’s left-wing 17-footer. Hopedale wouldn’t score another basket, though, as Hopkins finished on a 13-3 run.
Ciaglo and James Fitzgibbons connected from the floor and Earle made 4-of-4 at the foul line, pulling the Hawks to within 59-57. After a Hopkins timeout with 28 seconds to go, Ciaglo hit a cutting Earle on an inbounds pass for a bucket in traffic, tying the score at 59-59.
That prompted Hopedale’s last timeout at the 24.3-second mark, and Hopkins’ Cody West fouled Deppe with 14.9 on the clock. Deppe untied it with his two free throws, but Ciaglo provided the game-winning dagger.
The officials reset the clock to 1.8 seconds and Hopedale, needing to go the length of the floor, shaped to throw a long inbound pass. But Hopkins’ Cam Wade came up with the pickoff to close things out.
“We don’t have the size they have, but we have heart, and that’s huge,” said Hopkins coach Jim Hart, fresh off his celebratory postgame drenching. “Even if we fouled them late in the game, that was OK. We still had 14 seconds left to get our shot, and we’d have a chance to get a two or a three. Who else would you want to have the ball? The kids executed down the stretch, and it was pretty impressive how they listened to the game plan.”