Tiverton's Hancock Beats Buzzer and East Providence 40-38 [VIDEO]

A good start.

Jordan Hancock threw in a floater from the lane with one second remaining Thursday night to lift the boys’ basketball team to a thrilling 40-38 non-league victory over Division 1 East Providence High School in an Injury Fund game played in Tiverton.

Alex Rosa scored a game-high 16 points and Geoff McNally added 9 points as the host Tigers rallied from a five-point halftime deficit and pulled it out at the buzzer in dramatic fashion. Jawaan Lyles netted 15 points for the Townies, including 10 of their 13 points in the second half.

In a 32-minute display of offensive futility, both teams executed well offensively in their opening performances of the 2011-12 season, but were frigid from the field and missed a year’s worth of easy shots in the contest. To their credit, both teams produced solid defensive efforts, but were probably not as impressive as they appeared because of their shooting woes.

Nevertheless, the game was tightly contested (neither squad led by more than six points) and exciting to the end. Tiverton erased a 34-30 deficit with 7:47 remaining with a 6-0 run which consumed 3:36, but Lyles evened the count at 36-36 with 3:16 left on a steal and lay-in. McNally’s bucket off an out-of-bounds play put the Tigers ahead by a 38-36 margin at the 2:52 mark, but Lyles adroitly blocked a shot, scooped up the carom on the fly and scored an unmolested layup to forge a 38-38 stalemate with 1:37 to play.

After both teams misfired on scoring opportunities, Rosa was fouled attempting a three-point field goal with 26 ticks to go, but missed all three free throws. EP rebounded and worked the ball to Lyles, whose three-pointer with 10 seconds to play bounced off the rim and was corralled by the Tigers.

Tiverton opted to forego a timeout and Hancock ended up with possession on the left wing, dribbled twice into the lane and released a runner which nestled into the net just before the final buzzer sounded, eliciting a roar of approval from the partisan Tiger crowd.

Tiverton and East Providence both suffered serious graduation losses in June, so the two coaches approached Thursday’s game with different philosophies. While Tiverton’s Jerry Arcouette played his starting group for most of the contest, EP’s Alex Butler said he considered the outing to be just a “glorified scrimmage.”

“Tempo-wise, I thought we played how we wanted to play, but execution-wise, we still have a long way to go,” Arcouette said. “I was pleased that at key points in the game, especially when we fell behind, we kept our composure, and we made some good adjustments defensively in the second half. For the confidence of our players, this was a really important win for us.”

“We have only two players who have considerable varsity experience and it’s still so early in the season, so we played everyone on our roster (14 players) tonight and we’re not worried about the final score,” Butler said. “I thought we competed well and defended well. More importantly, I learned a lot of about some of our players tonight.”

Tiverton assumed first-half leads of 6-2 and 12-6 and was still on top by an 18-15 tally with 3:32 remaining when the Townies countered with a 10-2 burst ending the period and took a 25-20 edge into the locker room. Justin Andrade, John Vaughn and Dominic Leonardo all swished treys for EP during that stretch, but the guests netted just one in the second half (by Jashaun Bennett) as the Tigers extended their zone defense into the corners and pressured EP’s perimeter shooters.

Fresh off a memorable , Tiverton is in transition this winter, a face to which Arcouette readily admitted.

“This is a different type team and one still looking for its identity,” Arcouette said. “Unlike last year when we could score a lot of points, we’ll have to win games this year by playing defense and keeping other teams in the 40s and 50s.”

The Tigers’ starting corps of Rosa, McNally, Hancock, Kyle Vasconcelos and Alex Cotton is solid, but vital help from the bench must come from inexperienced players such as Adam Lavoie, Cody Frazier, Andrew Bonoan, Luke Johnston and Sam Turner. B.K. Kiser, Nick Barboza and Josh Lis are presently nursing injuries and will be missed.

“We’re still a work in progress,” Arcouette said. “The kids have bought into the concept of being a new team and doing things a new way, but we still have a long way to go.”

Tiverton will make its regular-season debut Saturday in West Roxbury, Mass., when it faces Catholic Memorial High School in a non-league clash.

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