Photo: Belmont vs Melrose

It was an up-and-down result for Belmont High’s Hoop teams on their opening day of the 2024-25 Boy and Girls’ campaign on Friday, Dec. 13. While the Marauders Girls romped past Melrose, the Boys wasted the efforts of a pair of impressive sophomores as the Raiders took home the victory from the Wenner Field House.

Boys: Melrose 51, Belmont 47

Belmont Head Coach Darren Martinez didn’t sugarcoat his team’s opening performance losing to a solid – but hardly great – Melrose squad. It needs to improve everywhere.

“There’s a lot to be learned on both ends of the floor, individually and as a team. We just had a lot of self-inflicted wounds that hurt you, I expected a little bit of sloppiness. I wish we would have come prepared, but just like I’ve always told you past couple of years, players win, coaches lose. So that’s on me,” said Martinez.

But Martinez saw a few sparks of optimism during the game, pointing to a pair of sophomores in Brayden Dargon and Pete McLaughlin who led the Marauders in scoring with 15 and 8 points.

It was somewhat understandable that the season opener would get off on a as Melrose (1-0) ran off to an 8-2 lead in the first four minutes only to see Belmont (0-1) go on a 9-0 run behind the slick play of Dargon to finish the first quarter up 11-8.

But just like that, the Raiders said “Hold our Gatorade” and matched Belmont’s surge with one of its own, an 11-0 spurt to snatch a 19-11 lead after 3:31 into the quarter, an advantage it would not give up for the remainder of the contest. Belmont did bring the deficit back to two, 21-19, but would trailed 23-19 at the half.

The third quarter saw the lead stay steady in the four to five-point range as Belmont’s guard kept the Marauders in range with a pair of knockdown jumpers as the Raiders entered the final eight minutes leading 37-32. Once again Belmont began hitting their shots and when Will Murphy hit a corner three with six minutes to cut the lead to a single point, it appeared Belmont had grabbed the game’s momentum for a late-game charge.

But Melrose’s senior big man Owen Mujalli would do what senior captains are expected in the final moments: put the team on his back. Mujalli first stole a cross-court pass and drive for two, then hit a spinning jumper for a deuce, and finished with a line-drive three to give Melrose a critical six-point spread, 47-41, in the final two minutes.

Belmont would fight back with a two-from Williams with 25 seconds remaining cutting the lead to a single possession, 50-47. But an apparent clean steal from a Belmont double team was blown as a foul, much to the noisy consternation of the Belmont Girls team watching in the stands. Mujalli – who scored 10 of his game high 18 points in the fourth – knocked down one of two from the charity stripe and ended the game with a defensive rebound.

“I’m gonna challenge my upper class and my juniors and seniors to be leaders and step up and help the young guys. To have sophomores step up like that is great, but I don’t think any great team is relying on sophomores to carry them,” said Martinez.

Next up for the Marauders will be an early season traveling two miles to historic rival Watertown on Tuesday, Dec. 17. It will be played at Watertown Middle School.

“The team showed its potential at times in the game, but they need to be better prepared mentally and physically for future games, especially against tougher opponents like Watertown, that’s for sure,” he said.

Girls: Belmont 70, Melrose 21

It was all smiles as the Girls’ Marauders entered Wenner Field House after the crimson and white dismantled the host Raiders by nearly 50 points, 70-21. “We beat them. Period,” a Marauder said emphatically describing the game between two mismatched Middlesex League teams.

Senior point guard Gabby Orfanos scored a game-high 18 points which included four threes, and sixth-player extraordinaire senior Brynn Connolly added 11 points. First-year Sarah Geller, who third-year head coach Shantell Jeter is high on after the preseason, started the game and knotted eight points.

Gabby had a real breakout game to show what she can do in every game while having a freshman on the floor to start tonight was also another message that we sent,” said Jeter.

Each of Belmont’s 14 member squad got a chance to get on the court in the game which Belmont outscored 22-1 in the first quarter.

“It was a good team effort,” said Jeter. “While they didn’t really have too much we still had a lot of opportunities to work on” a lot of our stuff” including a chance to mix and match lineups. Jeter also praised the team’s defense, producing a handful of five-second calls

Belmont will host its first home match against Watertown on Tuesday with tip-off at 6 p.m. said the Raiders will provide a much stiffer opponent this time around.

“We’ll have to be more intense. We gotta turn up every game,” she said.

0:18

Like about this game. I’m sure I’ll find some good things as well. When we listen and when we played together, when the ball moved, we got good shots.

yeah, we showed spurn to what we can do, and a lot of that is, you know, the bench has to be ready to play. You know, the starters played a lot in the second half, and a lot of it has to be with guys kind of not being ready, maybe nerds for the first game, a little bit of jitters.

I have to get them prepared, but they have to themselves, be mentally and physically prepared as well, so hopefully we bounce back on Tuesday, but it’s not going to be any easy against Watertown mastery.