UNCASVILLE — The tumult and the furor were at last dying down Sunday night, the furor of two talented high school teams going at each other 100 miles per hour without letup for nearly two hours and the tumult of the celebration that seemed to pull an entire city of Manchester into the Mohegan Sun Arena.
None of the players’ parents, grandparents, or maybe even great grandparents were alive, though basketball’s inventor, Dr. James Naismith was in the last year of his life when Manchester High last won a state championship in boys basketball in 1938. The game itself was still in its infancy; balls with laces only began disappearing from the sporting goods stores a year or two before.
“Manchester hasn’t done it in a long time, almost a century,” said senior Joe Mugovero, who made a critical free throw with nine seconds left in Manchester’s breath-stealing 77-74 victory over New London in the Division II final. “To do it with this group of people, it means the world to me because this group of people, I’ve been playing with since five, six years old. I’ve known Derrick Sheets since first day of school. We stayed together, now we’re state champs.”
Clik here to view.
The players did it for themselves, did it for each other, did it for the town that caught the fever and for a coach, John Reiser, without knowing the grief he was carrying throughout the year. When the last of his players finished talking and left the interview area, Reiser looked both ways and then pulled out his iPhone, with a Mass card attached to the back, and let his story out in whispers.
Reiser got a call year ago almost to the day, March 18, 2024, asking if he’d heard the news: Taylor Andrulot, who played for the Red Hawks before graduating in 2018, died suddenly from heart disease.
“So … so … so it means a lot to me to do it,” Reiser said, choking back the tears as he stared down at the Mass card. “These guys don’t even know about it. Taylor was my captain, hard worker, just a great kid. We were really tight. It broke my heart. I’ll tell you this, I wasn’t going to coach this year. After he died, I told my AD (Lindsey Boutillier), ‘I can’t do it any more.'”
Reiser, 63, has been coaching 37 years, Rockville boys, Rocky Hill boys, Manchester girls, winning state championships in 2003 and 05, and for the last 10 years, Manchester boys, and he’s approaching 600 wins. Now there was a chance to finish unfinished business with a group of kids he’d led for four years, who had grown up and played together in the town’s youth programs from their earliest dribble-drives. Boutillier talked Reiser out of stepping away, and the coach eventually began to heal internally.
“I started getting around the guys again and, yeah, I’m glad I did,” Reiser said. “But I almost gave it up right there.”
From his players, Reiser hid his pain. Taylor Andrulot’s final game for Manchester was an excruciating loss to Amity-Woodbridge in the second round of the 2018 tournament, but he decided against a win-it-for-Taylor speech when the team gathered before the game.
“I almost told the players before the game, but this was not the place,” Reiser said. “This is about them, keep the focus on them. They didn’t know what I was going through.”
Manchester was the top seed in Division II last season but lost in the second round. The Red Hawks were the top seed again this year and marched to Mohegan Sun to close the deal against the fast and fierce New London team. For decades, the state’s basketball power has resided in the bigger cities, or with the private schools able to draw players from multiple towns.
Manchester and New London were among the schools that reached the summit this year, Mohegan Sun, with the kids their towns gave them, kids who valued staying and playing together, “since we were 13 or 12,” Sheets said. “That means a lot.”
Division II boys basketball: Manchester defeats New London for first title since 1938
Residents of the towns filled the lower bowl, Manchester’s shade of red dominating its half, picking up Reiser’s necktie.
“The whole school wanted us to win, the whole town wanted us to win,” said Will Oden-Tann, who scored 18 before fouling out, adding drama to the Hoosiers-like story. “We stayed together and did it for the hometown, Manchester, we knew we had to get it done. We were ready for this moment.”
Manchester and New London ran relentlessly up and down the court, at a pace even college teams would have trouble sustaining for 32 minutes.
Manchester, down 10 early, came back quickly and there was no separation thereafter. And despite the intensity of the crowd, the pressure of the moment that would cause even a good college team to wilt, both teams took and made their open shots, especially threes, with conviction all night.
Reiser “rolled the dice” with his seniors. Point guard Chance Clark, who led the team with 24 points, Sheets (20 points) and Mugovero (nine) all played the entire 32 minutes on the bigger court and kept up the break-neck pace. Oden-Tann played 28 before his fifth foul with four minutes to go. Off the bench another senior, Cameron Major, was the open man when Manchester, up by two, needed a basket on their second to last possession. He buried the three, his only points of the night.
“I knew my teammates needed me to hit that shot, I had to let it fly,” Major said. “No way I thought it would come down to me hitting that shot, but I knew if I did, I had to shoot it with confidence.”
Clik here to view.
Only when New London’s DaShaun Phillips, who scored 20, missed a long, desperate 3-pointer at the buzzer was this game finally over, everything left on that floor as it should be. Then Manchester erupted, in, and probably outside the arena. Schools were to open three hours later on Monday, allowing for the celebration, 87 years in the making, a night the city will not soon forget. One pizza place has already offered to host an event for the team. A couple of weeks ago, Manchester’s most famous restaurateur offered Reiser free dinner for a year, but didn’t include specifics. “Geez, I’m going to owe Reiser dinner, I told him he could eat at my place,” Geno Auriemma quipped to reporters Sunday night.
Reiser should try the veal — it’s the best in the city.
“The town’s stepping up, the community has really been awesome,” Reiser said. “We’re so glad to do this for the town. That’s why it’s so special. For us, this is a really special year, because we can’t go out and reload like other people can. We were playing all seniors, this was it. I said, ‘I’m going with these guys.’ We might have to move up now, next year, they can put us in the Big East, I don’t care. We’ve got a championship.”
Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: What do Jim Calhoun and Gene Hackman have in common?