Raiders scuffle, but still hit 9-0

Wednesday, January 14, 1998

By John McGuirk
Correspondent

Fitchburg 81 Shrewsbury 50
FITCHBURG-- On paper, last night's Mid-Wach A boys' basketball contest between Fitchburg and Shrewsbury had all the makings of a mismatch.
         Fitchburg came into the game unbeaten and atop the league, while the Colonials had lost two straight and were in the league cellar.
         By game's end, the Red Raiders' 81-50 victory had turned into a runaway, but Shrewsbury wasn't out of this tilt until midway through the second half.
         “Give credit to Shrewsbury, they played very hard and they made us work,” said Fitchburg coach Doug Grutchfield, whose teams improves to 9-0, 3-0 in Mid-Wach A. “They caused a lot of turnovers. We threw the ball away way too many times.”
         Fitchburg committed 16 turnovers, 11 in the second half. However it more than made up for it with a solid shooting night. Five Red Raiders registered double digits.
         Jon Gauvin and Keith Leavitt shared team-high scoring honors with 14 points each. Leavitt, a 6-foot-8 junior, also grabbed a game-high 14 rebounds.
         Nick Joseph added 13 for Fitchburg, while Mark Gabriel and Gio Graciano netted 11 each.
         Shrewsbury (3-6, 0-3) was paced by Alberto Jarquin's 18 points. He was the only Colonial player to score in double figures.
         With 12:22 to go in the game, John Dahlstrom scored to bring Shrewsbury to within 10, 44-34. But some tight defense assisted Fitchburg as it shut down the Colonials from that point forward.
         “We still have a ways to go,” Grutchfield said. “We're still doing some stupid things. We're getting careless and I don't know if it's because of the competition or what. Hopefully it is.”
         The Red Raiders put some space between them and the Colonials thanks to a 14-4 run keyed by Gauvin, Graciano and Matt Creamer to take a 58-38 advantage with eight minutes to go. Following a Jarquin trey, Fitchburg scored the game's next 11 points to ice this affair, 68-38, with 6:26 to go. Fitchburg led by as many as 37 points at one juncture. The Colonials also had turnover problems, as they committed 20.
         “We're very young, very inexperienced and we're small,” said Kevin LaDuke, the Colonials coach. “We played basically 22 minutes out of a 32-minute game. If you take the last four minutes of the first half out and the last seven minutes of the game out, it's a 12-point game.”
         Fitchburg's quickness and transition baskets put it ahead early. Aided by a 9-2 spurt spearheaded by five points from Gauvin, the Red Raiders took a 19-8 lead. Fitchburg maintained its double digit lead for the remainder of the half. However, Jarquin led a charge in the closing minutes to cut the deficit to 32-26 with 3:24 left before halftime.
         The Red Raiders closed out the first half with a solid 9-2 run to head into the break up, 41-28.