BY SAPNA PATHAK
It’s not the first team you think of when you’re talking about Class L boys basketball powerhouses. It’s not the two-time defending state champion. It hasn’t had any players receive a Division I college scholarship in
the last two years.
It’s the other undefeated team.
And it has no problem going unnoticed while Central gets the headlines.
The boys of Salem basketball joined Central as the only team to beat Bishop Guertin of Nashua, with a 79-62 win on Tuesday, Jan. 30. The win pushed the Blue Devils’ record to 10-0, Salem’s best Class L start in around 20 years.
“We’ll come in under the radar, over it, through the radar,” said Salem head coach E.J. Perry with a laugh.
“As long as we’re winning games and doing what we’ve been doing, we don’t care who gets the spotlight.
Tonight was a big win. We built the lead and kept adding.That’s the only way we knew we’d take it.”
Perry had plenty of reasons to smile as he exited the previously packed gymnasium at BG. His star point guard, Stephen Savage, scored a career-high 36 points, while 6-foot-4 center Brian White had a stellar night under the boards.
Savage, who averaged 18 points as a junior last year, added six rebounds and five steals. White scored 13 points and pulled down a team-high 11 boards, although Perry jokingly had a hard time believing his carom-specialist didn’t have more.
Junior Josh Jones finished with 15 points, including two treys, and went 5-for-6 from the free-throw line.
The 17-point win was a testament to Salem’s defense, which constantly pressured the usually calm Cardinals. Blocked shots, traveling violations and miscues in the passing game plagued BG after the first quarter, when the Blue Devils led, 19-14.
“We spend a lot of time on defense in practice,” said Savage after the game. “Defense is No. 1; we’re like Central in that way. We don’t really feel we’re being overshadowed because I think we’re just as good.”
Perry sticks with a nine-man rotation. Starters White, Savage, Jones, Nick Loomis and Chris Voukides played most of the game, until relief came from juniors Kevin Sledge and Dan Kinney in the third and fourth quarter, respectively.
“With Stephen and Josh going like they’re going, they get in around 30 minutes a game,” said Perry. “We get it from different guys though. Tonight we got good depth from Sledge. One night we had it from [Josh] Frederico. It just depends.”
So while Central may be the team associated with the best 2007 campaign, the Blue Devils are quietly getting the job done.
Ask Savage about the untarnished record and he modestly waves it off as just another statistic, saying the only wins that count come when the regular season’s over.
Maybe he gets it from a coach who, early this year, recorded his 100th career win as Blue Devils mentor, but simply smiles and tries to change the subject for fear of being the center of attention.