It’s league postseason time on the local high school sports scene. Basketball makes run to SCC semifinals, hockey falls in SCC/SWC Division 1 championship game, and swimming places fifth at SCC Meet as all three teams fared well in advance of CIAC State Tournament competition.
Basketball — Basketball, especially playoff basketball, can be a game of runs and that was evident in the SCC semifinal matchup between fourth-seeded Hillhouse and eighth-seeded Notre Dame. Unfortunately, it was Hillhouse who had the last and game deciding run in the Academics 55-50 win at the New Haven Athletic Center on Monday, Feb. 26.
Notre Dame (16-7) started the second half on a 9-3 spurt to take a 33-26 lead with just over five minutes left in the third quarter. It was the largest lead of the night for the Green Knights. However, a cold spell offensively combined with some hot shooting by Hillhouse led to two separate Academic scoring stretches as the Academics took control.
Notre Dame got within 52-50 on a Zach Laput ‘20 (Beacon Falls, CT) and a Jaedin Kimbro three-pointer with 16 seconds left. Brewer would seal the game making a pair of free throws to push the lead to 54-50 in their eventual 55-50 win.
Connor Raines (17 points) and captain Michael Brooks (16 points) paced Notre Dame scoring as they combined to score 33 of the team’s 50 total points.
Hockey — The hockey team split the week by virtue of their 4-1 win at Notre Dame of Fairfield on Tuesday, Feb. 27 to finish regular season with a 12-8 mark. The Green Knights got a pair of power play goals in the second period from Michael Bencivengo and rode the hot goaltending of Brendan Crowley to the win.
Devin Napoli and Clayton Coassin also scored for Notre Dame. In the SCC/SWC Division 1 championship game, the Green Knights were shutout by Fairfield Prep, 5-0, on Friday.
Swimming — North Hansen was one of only two swimmers to win multiple events, setting a school record in the process, as he helped lead the Notre Dame swim team to a fifth-place showing at the 2018 SCC Championship Meet held on Wednesday, Feb. 28, at SCSU. Hansen set the school record in winning the 200 freestyle event in a time of 1:41.41.
He finished an almost five full seconds better than runner-up Ben Brewer from Cheshire. The previous record was held by Zac Czaplicki ‘04, who swam this event in a time of 1:42.02 in 2002. Hansen also won the 500 freestyle, touching the wall in a time of 4:36.71, a full 14 seconds faster than Xavier’s Andrew Mitchill.
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