HAMILTON — It's difficult to deal with the Masconomet boys basketball team when Adam Bramanti is hot.
It's nearly impossible to contend with them when teammate Alex Brown is chipping in as well.
Hamilton-Wenham was running an uphill race last night as Bramanti and Brown tortured them for most of the night as the visiting Chieftains ran away for a 70-58 victory.
Bramanti scored a game-high 30 points, including a pair of dagger three-pointers late in the fourth quarter, and Brown played the role of reliable sidekick to a T, dropping in 19.
"Brown's the assasin. He's the unsung hero in that lineup; I told our kids that before the game," Hamilton-Wenham (9-4) coach Doug Hoak said. "I told them that we had to be careful because if we helped off on Bramanti too much, Brown would kill us. We had a night where they were both on, which made it tough."
To the team's credit, Hamilton-Wenham never went away even though they fell behind by 14 points after scoring just six second quarter points.
Masconomet (9-5) increased its lead to 17 on four different occasions in the second half, but the Generals hung in with some full-court pressure defense.
A Stephen Tam steal and breakaway layup, followed by a Ryan Willis three-pointer, trimmed Masco's advantage to 11 (62-51) with 2:25 to play. But Bramanti slipped through the defense and slithered to the corner for an uncontested triple that gave the Chieftains some breathing room.
Once again Hamilton-Wenham fought back on a three by Tam and a James Foye layup that cut the deficit to nine (65-56) with 1:49 to go. Bramanti came up with the answer, knocking down another trifecta from the top of the key with the shot clock winding down.
"That was a big one. Adam is that type of kid," Masco coach Frank Shea said. "We're real fortunate to have a kid like that.
"We would have liked to get some things more smoothly 5-6 seconds earlier in the clock, but you have to give some credit to Hamilton-Wenham because their defense bothered us a little bit. We tried to be a little too fancy against the press instead of making the simple pass. That kind of got it (the score) back to where we weren't comfortable again."
Bramanti was consistent throughout and scored in a variety of ways. He hit threes, scored off offensive rebounds, turned his defense into offense and burned H-W going to the hoop and planting in the post.
Brown, meanwhile, scored 14 of his 19 points in the second and third quarters, mainly feeding off his high-profile teammate.
Even though Bramanti finished with 30 points, Tam, Hamilton-Wenham's senior court general, did a solid defensive job on him.
"There's a reason he's going where he's going (Division 2 Stonehill College); he can play," Hoak said about Bramanti. "I just told Stephen that he did a nice job on him when they were one-on-one. I'm not taking anything away from Bramanti, but some of those points in the boxscore are going to show up because we were gambling on defense and it wasn't Tam's fault."
Tam led H-W with 18 points, Willis added 12, and Shane Jenkins chipped in 10. Tighe Van Lenten was a spark for Masco, coming off the bench to produce eight points.
