Whalers earn tournament bid with P-town dispatch
The Whalers will advance to the state tournament, thanks to Saturday's 92-21 drubbing of Provincetown, giving them their tenth victory of the season and an automatic tourney slot.

Tomas Smaliorius is part of a strong bench that the Whalers plan to ride into the playoffs.

After Wednesday's battle against West Bridgewater, the P-town game was an out and out rout for the home team, and Nantucket took the opportunity to rotate players freely and work on play selection and development.

Evan Hourihan led all scorers with 16 points, including a pair of 3-point field goals.

It was a true team effort, however, as every player scored in the contest. With Adam Spencer out with a bad ankle sprain, and Delroy Lawrence and Jordan Beans lost for the season for academic reasons, coach Beau Almodobar knows he'll need to rely more than ever on his bench as the season progresses.

"Delroy and Jordan helped us win nine games," he said. "Now the other guys will have to step up. What this means is that more guys are going to get more minutes now."

If the distribution of minutes, and scoring, against P-town are any indication of the future, Nantucket will enter the post-season with balance as its byword. While continuing to run an uptempo game ("That's our m.o.," says Almodobar, "we like to run"), the Whalers exhibited patience in looking for the open man and setting up plays. "We were really distributing the ball well," Almodobar noted.

There is no better reflection of this than in the scoring breakdown. Aside from Hourihan's 16, Andriques Farmer netted 15, Jordan Ferreira had 12, Josh Butler 14, Tomas Smaliorius 12, Eric Lowell (who is developing into a key player coming off the bench) 11, Kevin Stanton 10 and Nik Phillips with 2.

Spencer should be ready to play this week, giving the Whalers more size in the middle to complement Stanton and Smaliorius down low.

The Whalers' next task it to capture the Lighthouse Conference Crown; road wins over Cape Cod Adademy, Cohasset and Sturgis would help to do the trick.

With only one home game remaining in the regular season (Feb. 10 against Cohasset), it would be nice to wind up with a few contests in the John O'Neill gymnasium during the post season.

WHALERS OUTRUNWILDCATS Both coaches understood what this game was- a tournament preview.

The Wildcats of West Bridgewater visited the island last Wednesday and the resulting contest was one of the most intense struggles the Whalers have had to endure this year. The rocking and rolling game was played in a boisterous gym, adding to the tournament-like atmosphere.

When it was over, and the Whalers prevailed 57-42, Nantucket coach Beau Almodobar and West Bridgewater coach Cully Ohlson exchanged handshakes, and knowing glances, on the court. "We're going to see them in the playoffs," Almodobar said afterwards. "Those are the kinds of games we're going to see in the tournament."

Both teams came out strong, and even though Delroy Lawrence and Josh Butler blocked several West Bridgewater shots to fire up the crowd, the Wildcats patiently built a 9 point edge to lead 20- 11 with seven minutes to go in the first half.

From there, the Whalers went on a 13-3 run, capped by a buzzer-beating field goal by Smaliorius that gave Nantucket the lead, at 24-23, it wouldn't relinquish.

Nantucket outscored West Bridgewater, 33-19, in the second half, controlling the ball and, more importantly, the tempo of the game.

"We lost our composure," Ohlson said. "We couldn't match their athleticism."

High praise indeed from the veteran coach whose teams are always tough contenders, and whose edition this year was 7-1 in the Mayflower League entering the game against Nantucket.

Almodobar couldn't help but agree with Ohlson's assessment. "We played hard; we outsized them; we outran them."

That being said, Almodobar wouldn't mind avoiding the Wildcats, and their work ethic, for the rest of the year.

"It could have been anybody's ball game," he said. "We didn't have that game in control until there were two or three minutes left."

High scorer in the game for Nantucket was Ferreira with 17 points. A good performance was also put in by Farmer, who had 15 points, two 3-

pointers and solid all-around play. I