ANNUS’ 3-POINT BLIZZARD BURIES GLOUCESTER 79-59
By Jim Baldwin
Belmont, MA. 3/5/19. It’s a good thing Mac Annus wasn’t invited to the NBA three point-shooting contest two weeks ago. He just might have embarrassed the superstars.
The junior guard from the Belmont boys varsity basketball team put on an incredible display of shooting prowess Tuesday night, hitting a jaw-dropping 12 three point shots in only 14 attempts, obliterating the program record for threes in a game, which was a mere nine, to lead his team to a 79-59 win over Gloucester in the Division 1 North semifinals.
His performance was timely. It appeared that the visiting Fishermen had done their Belmont homework.
They opened the proceedings with an impressive five-minute 17-6 run, destroying the vaunted Marauder press and scoring on seven of their first nine shots.
Then Annus happened.
It started innocently enough. He took a pass from sophomore teammate Tim Minicozzi and launched a three from the right corner, a shot he can make in the dark. It went in.
He hit another trey on the next Belmont possession. After Minicozzi sunk a three of his own, Annus up-faked, stepped inside his leaping defender and buried a long two, again, nothing but net.
Before the half was over Annus would hit eight straight shots, seven of them threes, none of them touching the rim, to bring his team from that early eleven point deficit to a 40-31 lead—a 20 point turnaround.
Belmont coach Adam Pritchard said, “A game like this is nothing outside his capabilities. I’ve seen him make 15, 16 in a row in practice. He’s a very competent shooter. And he can get it off quick.”
Unfortunately for the Fishermen, Annus wasn’t done. He hit five more threes in the second half, although two of them did touch the rim. And he actually missed two shots.
“Yeah, I missed two,” Annus said. “I’ll have to run some extra laps in practice for that,” he laughed.
“I was in the zone. Feeling it,” he said. “Every one of them felt good coming off my fingertips. Even the ones that didn’t go in felt good, and my teammates kept finding me. They wanted me to keep shooting. I appreciated that.”
For the game his shooting line read, 13 of 15 from the floor, 12 of 14 from behind the arc for 38 points.
Not a bad night’s work.
Pritchard added, “We have a kid here who’s the school’s all time leading scorer. Danny (Yardemian, senior co-captain) puts so much pressure on defenses that it opens things up for the other guys, and to have a shooter like Mac, and others, by the way, it’s tough to cover all those weapons.”
Yardemian (15 points), Minicozzi (10), senior co-captains Dan Seraderian (4) and Ben Sseruwagi (6) all had big assist nights just by getting the ball in Annus’ hands.
Gloucester had come to play, and their early success had the home team on their heels. When the Belmont press works, it creates chaos. When it doesn’t, it creates a layup line for the other team.
Gloucester was getting layups.
“I love to press,” Pritchard said, “but we had to come off it. They’d scouted us really well in our last game. We had to drop back and just focus on getting some defensive stops.”
The strategy worked. After yielding a 24 point first quarter to Gloucester, and a seven point deficit, Belmont held the visitors to just seven in the second, and, with Annus on fire, left the court at halftime ahead 40-31.
Gloucester senior co-captain Ben Oliver would have made headlines on most nights except this one with seven treys on his way to a team leading 27 points.
Senior post man Matt Montagnino added 17 for the Fishermen.
The win advances the top ranked Marauders to the Division 2 North finals where they will face defending D2 Champ and sixth seeded North Andover at the Tsongas Center in Lowell on Saturday.