February 27th marked the day that every Rhode Island high school basketball player waits for, playoffs. Hosting the North Providence Cougars, the 10-5 Spartans found themselves in a rematch of the previous week’s victory over the Cougars, but this time loser goes home. The confident Spartans ran into the gymnasium, and began their pregame warm-ups with a look of intensity in their eyes. With a sold out crowd ready watch a highly anticipated game, some fans began chants early on in the contest, one excited enough to maybe show a little skin.

The game began with great post play by Senior Tom Ferranti, which sparked the Spartans to an early 19-13 lead. The Cougars of North Providence found themselves in a game that was above their heads, as Scituate showed no mercy and poured on the points, as they took a 53-13 lead over the struggling Cougars. There was some excitement before the half as 6’4 center Tom Ferranti found himself on a breakaway as the crowd was ready for a dunk to take place (as Tom had promised throughout the season) but the pressure got to Tom as he bobbled the pass, and had to lay it in for a rudimentary lay-up. Tom “I don’t know what happened, I was so excited that the perfect moment had finally come for the dunk to happen…and I couldn’t handle the lob pass!” The Cougars were stuck at the 13 mark point until the Spartans lead by an astonishing 50 points, but not before husky, Senior, Chris O’Neill was spotted topless in the stands waving his shirt above his head, giving the Spartans an added spark over the already crippled North Providence squad. As the final seconds of the game wound down, and 2nd and 3rd string players were sent on the court, the Spartans had pulled off an incredible lob sided victory, with the final score being 85-34, and with a beyond impressive win like this, the post season looked bright for the talented Spartan squad.

Tom Ferranti paved the way in the victory posting a game high, 21 points, followed by the deadly perimeter shooting of Mike Wilbur who added 13 points. “I just couldn’t miss, it was just one of those days” Mike said. The Spartans next battle was scheduled for March 1st against Rogers High School at CCRI.

With a 50 point victory over North Providence in the rear view mirror, Scituate was hoping that the swagger from a week ago would carry over. Although the idea sounded good, the Spartans found themselves in a double digit deficit midway through the first half. Steadily chipping away at the deficit, Scituate found themselves down only 9 at the half. With a different defensive scheme to shut down Rogers’ All-American Forward Mason Choice, the Spartans rallied around Junior, Zach Caron to provide the spark to lead the team, defensively, and offensively, who drained 3 clutch three-pointers late in the game. Zach stated “I did all that could do, the intensity was there, the passion was there, but we were still work to be done.” The Spartans found themselves down 3 points, with under a minute to play in regulation. Captain Ryan Almonte, stepped up to the spotlight and buried a game-tying 3 pointer. “Everything was just blocked out, and I only focused on the shot, it was pretty weird” said Ryan. With 14 seconds left, Choice dribbled the length of the court and hit a lay up to put Rogers up 1 with 7 seconds on the clock. On the inbound, Senior, Ben Salvatore dribbled the length of the court, and the ball was knocked out of bounds with 2.1 seconds left, but enough time for the Spartans to run one last play. However, on the inbound the ball was deflected and the clock struck 0.

Upon the conclusion of the game, Rogers senior Alex Murray waved an inappropriate gesture to the Scituate faithful. Following the game he was handed a one game suspension, and then quit the team. Despite the poor sportsmanship, Scituate’s great season ended in an emotion filled game that the players on the team will remember for the rest of their lives. Senior, Ryan Almonte recapped the season by saying “It was a great season, nobody expected us to do anything, and we proved them wrong, even though we didn’t go the distance, we were, and still plan on being a brotherhood.”