MIAA Playoffs vs Reading

It's a tie game again with 4 seconds left. Reading takes out the ball and gets fouled.

With only 2 seconds left.... Jasper did throw in the miracle shot last week.... we run out of time.

LAWRENCE -- Free throws aren't always free.

That could very easily be the epitaph for this year's Classical boys basketball team. Where the Rams got away with some spotty foul shooting in Sunday's win over North Andover, they didn't get away with it Tuesday night. They were only 12-for-24 from the line.

As a result, they lost, 68-67, to Reading in the Division 2 North semifinal. The Rockets will go on to play Salem, which eked out a win over Dracut in the other semi, in Saturday's final at Emmanuel College (8 p.m.).

"In big games, you have to make those foul shots," said Classical coach Tom Grassa. "And there is a point where if you knock those points down, that's the difference right there."

Jasper Grassa came out of the box on fire, scoring Classical's first seven points (and 17 of his team's 32 in the first half), but in what might come to be known for the ages as the "battle of junk defenses," Reading coach Paul Morrissey won the day -- if barely. Grassa finished with 28, but he had to work hard for all of them.

Morrissey employed a triangle-and-two defense on Grassa some of the time, with the two defenders double-teaming him.

"We just did our best to keep the ball out of his hands," Morrissey said. "And all you can do after that is hope for the best. Plus, he got in a little foul trouble too, and that really helped us out."

Meanwhile, no matter what defense Grassa used, the Rams couldn't slow down the troika of Trey Jones (21 points) and Brian Bourque and Kenny Reed (14 each). He started in a matchup zone, and feels as if he abandoned it too soon for "junk defenses" that -- in the end -- didn't work too well either.

"I'm kicking myself now," he said. "We had a game plan in place, and I let my emotions get the better of me and abandoned it.

"But no matter what we did, they got the ball too easily."

In the second half, he went with a box-and-one, focusing on Jones, "and they (Reading) still scored too easily.

"In the beginning, we wanted them to shoot 35-40 threes, and gamble on them making only 30 percent of them."

Then, Jones put one in from well beyond the arc right away, and there went that plan.

Still, the Rams -- thanks mainly to their three-point shooting -- hung around for the entire game, despite being cold from the floor and from the line. And when Nick Grassa drained a three from the corner early in the fourth period, Classical had a five-point lead and a little bit of momentum.

But whenever it looked as if Classical might be ready to pull away, there was Bourque, or Reed, or Jones to stick one in and keep the Rams from going on a run. The lead see-sawed back and fourth throughout the fourth quarter, and Reading grabbed a 65-62 lead with 1:56 to go.

However, Carlo Buono (who finished with 13 points) drained a crucial three-pointer with 1:05 to go to tie it. Classical had a chance to pull ahead when Josh Cheever rebounded a Reed miss with 50 seconds left.

Jasper Grassa was fouled with 32 seconds to go, but couldn't connect on the freebies. Reading came down and left it up to Jones to shoot for the win, but Ariel Ligonde got up high for the clean block, giving Reading another chance with two seconds left on the shot clock (and four in the game).

The ball was inbounded to Bourque, who was fouled as he went up for the shot.

"I don't want to point to that," Grassa said. "The ball came in slowly and we just watched the kid catch it. All we had to do was get a hand on it and swat it to half-court and we're in overtime."

Bourque hit one of the two free throws. And once again, Grassa was left -- just like Sunday -- to throw up a desperation heave with the horn sounding. But this time, it sailed wide, and Reading -- which went to the Boston Garden two years ago -- will be playing for the chance to get back there Saturday.