{"id":10319,"date":"2024-01-31T13:09:43","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T13:09:43","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"Pembroke-Boys-Basketball-Manchester-West-53857230\/","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/?p=10319","title":{"rendered":"Boys\u2019 basketball: Pembroke\u2019s maturity and togetherness fuels overtime win over Manchester West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Pembroke
Pembroke forward Javien Sinclair (left) battles with Manchester West forward Max Shosa for a rebound during the first half of Tuesday night\u2019s encounter in Pembroke. The Spartans shook off a late West rally to prevail in overtime, 66-62.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Pembroke
Pembroke guard Joe Fitzgerald scores at the rim during the first half against Manchester West on Tuesday night, January 30, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Pembroke
Pembroke guard Joe Fitzgerald (20) starts the celebration after the Spartans rebounded in overtime for a narrow home win over Manchester West.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Pembroke
Pembroke guard Joe Fitzgerald scores a 3-pointer during the second half against Manchester West on Tuesday night, January 30, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Fans
Fans and Pembroke players celebrate at center court after the Spartans beat Manchester West in overtime on Tuesday night, January 30, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Pembroke
Pembroke guard Evan Berkeley scores at the rim during the second half against Manchester West on Tuesday night, January 30, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Pembroke
Pembroke guard Evan Berkeley scores at the rim during the second half against Manchester West on Tuesday night, January 30, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>

PEMBROKE \u2013 The Pembroke Academy boys\u2019 basketball team led Manchester West 50-40 with 4:37 left in the fourth quarter on Tuesday night. With two minutes left, their lead was just 52-49. With 30 seconds left, it was tied, 56-56.<\/p>\n

Pembroke nearly suffered an unfathomable collapse. But in overtime, the Spartans dug down.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just heart at that point, who wants it more,\u201d said junior guard Evan Berkeley, who scored 22 points in Pembroke\u2019s eventual 66-62 victory. \u201cWe had a crazy fan section hyping us up. Everybody around us was showing us love, and so it was just who wanted it more at that point. And we came out on top.\u201d <\/p>\n

Most teams that blow a late 10-point second-half lead don\u2019t recover. For the Spartans, this was the very situation where their maturity and togetherness on the floor gave them the advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the summertime, in the fall, if that would\u2019ve happened, we would\u2019ve folded and we would\u2019ve lost,\u201d said senior captain Joe Fitzgerald who led the way with 25 points. \u201cBut we showed maturity, we showed character, we showed that we\u2019re a championship season team today.\u201d <\/p>\n

The game served as another reminder of why Pembroke is such a hard team to defend. Every time the Spartans needed a bucket, it seemed, Fitzgerald either drove to the basket for a layup or free throws, or he dished it to the corner for a teammate to knock down a 3-pointer.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe does it all,\u201d Berkeley said. \u201cHe can score from all three levels. When he is getting double-teamed and triple-teamed, that just opens all of us up, and so that\u2019s what makes it so lethal as a team.\u201d <\/p>\n

In addition to Berkeley and Fitzgerald, senior Zach Al-Shawafi had 12 points on four 3-pointers. The Blue Knights (7-3) couldn\u2019t lock in on any particular scorer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tell the kids, you don\u2019t know when you\u2019re going to get called into the game, but when you get in there, make an impact,\u201d Pembroke coach Mike Donnell said.<\/p>\n

And most of his players that saw the floor did just that.<\/p>\n

While this season is the second straight year Pembroke\u2019s viewed itself as a Division II title contender, it\u2019s jumped out to a 10-1 start with a mostly new cast. Remember, the Spartans graduated nine seniors from last year\u2019s runner-up team. But even though the roster looks quite different, the togetherness that elevated Pembroke last year seems to once again be the team\u2019s calling card.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see them all the time; they\u2019re a tight group,\u201d Donnell said. \u201cThey play together. They don\u2019t get nervous. I\u2019m the one that gets nervous, not the kids. They just have a ton of confidence in themselves. Sometimes they do things that we would rather they not do, but they still got the job done.\u201d <\/p>\n

And as Donnell sat on the bench after the win in the mostly-empty gym that minutes before was raucous, there was no question in his mind why his group came out on top.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis team doesn\u2019t quit,\u201d he said. \u201cThey continue to battle. We bend. We don\u2019t break. They play together.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things we preach about all the time is in a horse race, it\u2019s where the horse finishes, not where it starts. \u2026 When we went into overtime, the boys sat down, they looked at me and said, \u2018Coach, we got this. We got this.\u2019 We were the fortunate team tonight to pull it off.\u201d <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PEMBROKE \u2013 The Pembroke Academy boys\u2019 basketball team led Manchester West 50-40 with 4:37 left in the fourth quarter on Tuesday night. With two minutes left, their lead was just 52-49. With 30 seconds left, it was tied, 56-56.Pembroke nearly suffered…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":10320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","_newspack_byline_active":true,"_newspack_byline":"by [Author id=188]Eric Rynston-Lobel[\/Author] Monitor staff","newspack_content_restriction_is_exempt":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,508],"tags":[24,505,274],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[533],"class_list":["post-10319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-youth","category-top-headlines-cm","tag-facebook","tag-paywall","tag-pembroke-academy","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/42815873-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10321,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10319\/revisions\/10321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10319"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fnewspack_spnsrs_tax&post=10319"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=10319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}