The Noble boys’ basketball team had a chance to make some history Saturday. The Knights were ready.
Jamier Rose had 24 points and 13 assists while guiding Noble’s breakneck offense, and the third-seeded Knights earned their first quarterfinal victory since 1985 with a 76-50 win over No. 6 Greely in the Class A South tournament at the Portland Expo.
“I just am extremely proud of the guys. The community support, I look behind us and I get chills from everybody who’s excited about Noble basketball,” said Knights Coach John Morgan, who also got 14 points from Chase Dodier and 12 from Bryce Guitard. “The kids have earned it, and they’ve done it the right way.”
The Knights (15-4) recognized their accomplishment. But they weren’t about to dwell on it.
“It’s huge. Going into the year, nobody expected us to blow up the way we did,” Rose said. “We expected it, because we knew what we could do. Our main goal this year was to prove everybody wrong, but we’re not done.”
Next up for Noble is a semifinal against seventh-seeded Westbrook, which upset No. 2 Falmouth, 50-43.
With Kade Ippolito (20 points) leading the way, Greely (9-10) kept pace with the Knights in the first half and trailed just 32-27 early in the third. But Noble’s pace, featuring high-pressure defense and an unrelenting fast break, prevailed, and the Knights were up 49-37 after three quarters.
Eight straight points to open the fourth quarter put Noble in cruise control.
“I feel like if we can find some structure in the chaos there, it’s how these guys like to play,” Morgan said. “That’s when we’re at our best.”
At the heart of the break was Rose, whose full-length passes in transition keyed the Noble attack.
“I’m a quarterback in football, so throwing is very easy for me (and) I can outlet the ball very fast,” said Rose, who also had six steals. “As a group, we practice it a lot. Every drill we do is getting up and down, getting our teammates used to when to cut, where to cut.”
Rose wasn’t the only beneficiary of the pace. Besides the contributions from Dodier and Guitard, Ashton Mutagoma scored nine points, and Isaiah Conary chipped in with eight.
“We have a bunch of AAU guys here. We just translate that to school ball,” Guitard said. “Other teams try to have a more slow pace, but we kind of do the opposite and it works.”
Owen Partridge scored 12 points for Greely.
“You’ve got to be able to get stops to hang with them,” Rangers Coach Travis Seaver said. “If you’re going to go basket for basket with them, it’s going to be a challenge.”
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