Norwood Boy’s Hoop

After posting a 14-6 regular season record last season in which they captured the Bay State League (BSL), the Norwood boy’s basketball team ventured into the Division 2 South Tournament where they beat Hingham (43-40) in the first round and lost to Randolph (64-60) in the next round. The Mustangs said goodbye to 12 seniors from that tournament team and return only three this winter. Coach JJ Oliver definitely has his work cut out for him.
Returning to the court for Norwood are co-captains Kyle Condon (center) and Richie Watson (point guard); as well as small forward Mike James. Through the first three quarters of the season Watson and James have each contributed 15 points per game and are leading the Hergett Division in the Bay State League in scoring. Condon has been the team’s leader in rebounds.
Coming into the season Oliver had high expectations from his three returning seniors.
“I had expected Richie and Kyle to play well and was hoping that Mike would step his game up and take it to the next level,” the Mustang Coach said. “He’s been a pleasant surprise to the entire league and has been catching them off guard. Although I didn’t see it at first, I did notice the way he was practicing was going to correlate to the court.”
Oliver knew that he had an athletic team that would play night in and night out for him, but he was unsure where the team would be in terms of wins and losses.
“We didn’t set goals based on wins, but to find ourselves at 7-7 so far I would call it a successful season,” OIiver said. “I wanted the team to work on getting better, especially when we played the teams in the Hergett Division for the second time.”
Sitting on the bubble of the tournament with 6 games to go at the time of this writing, Oliver and company defiantly wanted to take that extra step forward and advance into the tournament; however the Coach knew it wouldn’t be an easy task.
“Each game will be tough," Oliver said. "When you look at the Bay State League, you know that every Tuesday and Friday night is going to be tough with all the parity in the league. We will need to take care of home court if we want to advance through the tournament; we would prefer to play at home. When we play defensive basketball and get those important rebounds, it feeds into our offense; take care of the rebounds and the offense will come.”
In addition to Condon pulling down numerous key rebounds per contest, the Mustangs have also gotten help from senior Mike King, who is averaging seven rebounds per contest and Jason Ortega with nine. While it is the big men who get the ball rolling, all five athletes on the court need to do their job.
Offensive senior shooting guard Ricky Meehan has been contributing as of late with his three-point shooting. The senior, who is averaging 9.6 points per contest for the Mustangs, has contributed several hot games for Norwood. When Meehan gets hot, he’s been knocking down 4-threes per game.
While holding steady at .500, Oliver said his squad has very rarely been blown out during the season.
“We’ve only had two stinkers all year and every other game has been close,” Oliver said. “Playing in the BSL against a lot of Division 1 schools helps us prepare for the Division 2 tournament.”
Having already gone .500 through the first three quarters of the season, Norwood just needs to continue that trend over the last six games to advance into the tournament, where the season resets and everyone is 0-0.