ANDOVER — It’s an awesome luxurious for Andover boys basketball coach Dave Fazio to have a look at his backcourt and know that when the Golden Warriors want factors, they’re probably coming.
On Friday, inside a sold-out Dunn Gymnasium, Charlie Tutwiler and Josh Roux carried Andover when it wanted it most.
No. 10 Xaverian pushed the second seed for 3 quarters earlier than Roux and Tutwiler put the Golden Warriors on their backs and carried them to a 56-42 win and a spot within the D1 Closing 4 towards Bishop Feehan, a 65-60 double time beyond regulation winner towards Bridgewater-Raynham.
“In my humble opinion, I feel we’ve the perfect backcourt in Massachusetts,” Fazio mentioned. “Charlie’s our engine, and Josh is the steering wheel. These two had been simply insane.”
Roux and Tutwiler mixed to attain 21 of Andover’s remaining 23 factors. Roux led all scorers with 25 factors whereas Tutwiler added 15.
Andover (21-2) wanted all of these factors as a result of Xaverian (14-9) made life troublesome for twenty-four minutes. Sadly for the Hawks, it was a 32-minute sport.
Six straight Andover factors to start the fourth capped an 11-3 run that gave the Golden Warriors their largest lead at 45-35.
5 straight factors by the Hawks adopted however Andover was merely an excessive amount of down the stretch. Tutwiler drove to the bucket for 2 earlier than Roux adopted go well with.
One other Tutwiler layup, this one with 68 seconds left, upped the result in 52-40 and commenced the Andover followers celebration.
That celebration was additionally enabled by the Andover protection. Xaverian managed solely 5 discipline objectives within the second half because the Golden Warriors plan to remove the lengthy vary shot labored practically to perfection.
“That’s a harmful workforce that beat everybody this season,” Fazio mentioned of Xaverian. “The plan was to defend the arc and so they acquired us a couple of instances however all in all it was great. Our protection is what’s acquired us right here.”
There was nothing to decide on between the groups for the primary 16 minutes as they traded the lead 10 instances and nobody led by greater than 4 factors as Andover carried a 28-27 lead into the break.
They prolonged that margin to 34-27 in the beginning of the third earlier than Xaverian had one other run in them, reducing the result in two earlier than Andover’s dynamic backcourt took over.
