boys' basketball
No. 9 Watertown 76, No. 11 Lexington 64

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Watertown boys' basketball coach Steve Harrington couldn't tell you how many assists junior point guard Benyam Kerman tallied Friday night while pacing his Raiders to a 76-64 win over Middlesex League rival Lexington.

It was just as hard to count the number of compliments players and coaches served up for Kerman after the game.

"To me, Kerman was the Player of the Game," said Harrington. "(Kerman) came back after playing a lot of minutes off the bench for last year's (state championship) team. The ball is his and the team is his. He really shined tonight in a big game. His decision making was fantastic."

Lexinton coach Bob Farias, whose troops watched their 43-game conference winning streak end with the loss (the last league defeat also came against Watertown during the 2004-05 season), was similar in his praise.

"That was the best guard performance against us in years and years," he said. "(Kerman) was in complete control of the game out there."

Eleventh-ranked Lexington scored the game's first five points, but Watertown responded by scoring the next 13 points and never quite looked back. The ninth-ranked Raiders led by 20 on two occasions in the third quarter and by 18 with about six minutes to go before Lexington surged.

Five times Lexington cut its deficit to single digits late in the fourth quarter, but each time Kerman seemed to deliver a perfect feed for the bucket that kept Watertown comfortably ahead.

Most of those passes landed in the hands of sharpshooting guard Kyle Stockmal. After hitting the only first-half 3-pointer for a Watertown team that usually prefers to put its points on the scoreboard in trios, Stockmal stroked a quintet of trifectas in the second half, while pouring in 21 of his game-high 34 points.

A 34-point performance is good enough to earn Player of the Game nods most nights, but Kerman took the spotlight Friday.

"It wasn't just the assists, it was the way he created," explained Harrington. "A lot of times those assists go on easy layups, which we got, but (Kerman) created open looks all over the court for a bunch of different guys."

A Stockmal trifecta put Wartertown on top, 50-30, with 2:16 to play in the third quarter. But an underclassmen-laden Lexington wouldn't go quietly. Even after another Stockmal triple had the Minutemen down, 59-41, with about six to go, coach Farias' squad fired back.

Junior Lance Greene, quiet to that point with only five points, stroked a trio of 3-pointers to fuel Lexington on a 14-4 burst that carved the lead to eight at 63-55 with 3:11 to play.

But Kerman fed Stockmal at the other end for yet another 3-pointer. Stockmal proceeded to make six free throws over the final 40.6 seconds, finishing 12 of 12 at the charity stripe for the night.

Danny O'Keefe paced Lexington with 22 points (12 in the second half), while senior Scott Tavares kicked in 18 more. Greene finished with 14.

Jesse Brackett might have been the other Player of the Game for Watertown. He quietly poured in 19 points (11 in the second half), including a number of second-chance baskets underneath the hoop. Kerman chipped in 12 points as part of an absolutely dominating effort at both ends of the court.