Townies Rally in Second Half to Beat Barrington Eagles

The boys’ basketball team rallied from an eight-point deficit early in the second half to defeat visiting Barrington High, 50-44, in an exciting non-league game Tuesday night and the regular-season opener for the Townies.

Jawaan Lyles poured in a game-high 18 points and Brendan Quigley added 10 points as Division 1 EP used a stingy defense and clutch free throw shooting in the final two minutes of play to hand the Division 2 Eagles their second non-league loss in as many nights to a Division 1 rival. Barrington had bowed, 38-34, on the road Monday night at Cranston West High after defeating Division 1 Mount Pleasant High of Providence last week in an Injury Fund contest.

Jesse Browne and Jack Wenzel both netted 10 points to pace the Eagles and Nick Raymond contributed 8 points. Barrington played minus the services of top scorer Ben Engvall, who suffered a finger injury in the second half of the loss to Cranston West.

Tuesday night, Barrington built a 27-21 lead at halftime and a put-back by Raymond in the opening minute of the second half peaked its lead at eight points (29-21). The Townies gradually battled back and used a 7-0 spurt midway through the period to take the lead for good at 35-33, but sweated it out until the final buzzer.

With his team clinging to a 42-41 edge with 1:48 left, Lyles swished a pair of free throws and Raymond countered with one charity toss for the guests 21 seconds later. John Resendes produced a clutch drive and lay-in with 55 seconds to go to widen the gap to 46-42 before Browne buried a jumper in the lane 11 seconds later to reduce the differential to 46-44.

Quigley missed a jumper for the Townies with 15 seconds to play, but teammate Alex Hurley forced a jump ball with EP retaining possession. Lyles took an inbounds pass and was fouled, calmly dropping in both to expand the cushion to 48-44 with 13 seconds remaining.

Hurley rebounded a Barrington miss in the dying seconds, was fouled and drained two foul shots to complete the scoring.

“We’re getting better,” said EP Coach Alex Butler. “I liked the way we scrapped back into the game after being behind and I thought we played well defensively in the second half.”

“I can’t complain about the way we played defense tonight because East Providence always has a very good program and good athletes,” said Barrington Coach Patrick Sullivan. “We had some opportunities offensively in the second half that we didn’t capitalize on.”

In the end, the Townies prevailed because they executed well in the closing stages of the contest, converted critical free throw attempts and slowed down the Eagles’ offense with a sticky 1-3-1 half-court trap in the second half. Neither club shot particularly well from the field and Engvall’s absence was unquestionably a disadvantage for the Eagles.

Browne scored eight unanswered points in a 48-second span of the first half to give Barrington an early 12-5 lead and the Eagles increased their bulge to 22-14 with 5:05 left in the opening period after Wenzel canned his second three-pointer of the half. A Connor Slye free throw with three seconds left in the chapter gave the visitors their six-point spread at the break.

After the contest, both coaches said they were relatively pleased with their teams’ performances.

“I think we’ll have to win with our defense this year,” Butler said. “Except for Jawaan and Brendan, we don’t have much varsity experience and our other players are still learning the system. We’re getting there.”

“I thought we responded well tonight to the challenge of playing back-to-back games and we played hard for all 32 minutes,” Sullivan said. “Games like this one will get us ready for the regular season.”

Both squads will commence their divisional schedules Friday on the road. East Providence will head to Hope High of Providence for a Division 1 battle, while Barrington will journey to Pilgrim High of Warwick in a Division 2 outing.