Senior point guard and captain Mason Vasconcellos came onto the court after the game with a bag of ice taped around his lower leg. A potential injury seemed surprising as he led the Wareham Vikings boys basketball team with 16 points – 11 points coming into the second half -- in a Vikings win, 61-42, against Old Rochester Regional on Friday evening.

“In the middle of the second quarter, I just was jogging to the hoop, and I don’t know – I got the foul called — someone must have kicked me,” Vasconcellos said. “My knee… my upper ankle just buckled.”

“Luckily, there was not much time left in the second quarter, so I got to recover. Once we got back to the locker room, I knew it was going to swell up, so I just kept walking back and forth,” he added. “By the time we came out for the second half, I couldn’t even feel it.”

In the second half, Vasconcellos continued to run the Vikings’ fast-paced offense well, and began to hit outside shots.

“We tried to speed up the game, and we just tired them out,” Vasconcellos said. “That’s what we do: We tired out the team in the second half.”

“Once we tired them out, we were able to run more and more and get open looks, and they couldn’t keep up with us.”

Old Rochester did keep within reaching distance of the Vikings in the third quarter, staying within single digits.

The Bulldogs “got within 9 or 7 of us, and it felt like 2,” coach Kevin Brogioli said.

The Bulldogs ran a similar, up-tempo offense.

“They like to score in transition, so we made an effort to get back,” Brogioli said. “That was an emphasis: Get back on D, make them work for everything, and try to push it on the other end.”

“If most teams want to run with us, we generally think that’s to our advantage,” Brogioli said. “We’re very respectful of ORR’s ability, and the kids came to play. They didn’t like losing on their home court and seeing Spellman celebrate last week" in a tourney hosted by Wareham, "and they didn’t want to see that happen again.”

“This place would have erupted had ORR won tonight with their fans,” Brogioli said. “We didn’t want to see that happen, we wanted to make a statement that we’re still the champions and we take that role seriously.”

With that mentality, the Vikings came away as the champions in the battle for Route 6.