Amidst chaos surrounding them, a sudden calmness rushed over Newman’s huddle entering overtime of the Class AAA championship game. The Cardinals had just blown a 16-point lead to New Hampton in less than four minutes, but they were anything but panicked.
Nasir Meyer’s missed free throw with less than a second remaining in regulation – which would have given New Hampton a miraculous victory – gave Newman head coach Jackson Johnson and his team the second chance they were hoping for. But the Cardinals were also built for these moments.
“They gave us extra life,” Newman senior Reggie Grodin said. “They messed up. The message was, ‘Take it.’”
It was fitting that this moment defined Newman’s championship. The Cardinals emerged with a thrilling 107-100 overtime victory over New Hampton to claim the program’s first Class AAA title, and they clinched it facing their most difficult situation yet. But that’s how they liked it. All winter, they not only embraced adversity, they actively sought it out. And it all came to fruition as they held the trophy high on championship day.
“We want that. We want the other team’s best shot. We want things to not potentially go perfectly because we want to see how much we improved when that happens,” Johnson said. “When things don’t go our way, is that when we’re really getting tighter? That’s a good lesson for life and that’s a huge piece of what we’re trying to teach our team.
“We want to hunt those uncomfortable situations and really learn how to deal with those as efficiently and effectively as possible.”
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A relatively unknown school when Johnson arrived in 2022, Newman’s trajectory into a national powerhouse and NEPSAC championship program was rapid. In Year 3 as a Class AAA team, the Cardinals set a school record for wins with 31. Johnson has quickly assembled a roster rich with Division 1 talent to compete and regularly win against the best in the country.
From the outside looking in, it may have seemed easy. But Newman’s path to glory this winter was not perfect.
For as good as they were, the season presented a surplus of learning moments they needed to get to their destination. Johnson, with his relative inexperience, was still learning on the fly. His players needed to learn winning habits. Newman started the season 14-2 before a critical stretch in January taught them important lessons. During a nine-game stretch against some of the best teams in the region and the country, the Cardinals went 4-5, including losing four out of five games at one point.
Newman didn’t blink. This is the adversity they asked for.
“That was really important for us,” Johnson said. “It put pressure on who we were as a team. We had a ton of early success but we hadn’t been battle-tested. Things had gone our way. I think Reggie said it, we’ve been trying to almost create a sense where we’re hunting, welcoming and hunting the adversity, the difficult times. …
“Life teaches you those same things.”
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Newman went 12-1 the rest of the way to claim the championship, getting contributions up and down the roster and more importantly, seeing growth in their development. Lucas Morillo, who was one of the most productive players in the region in his first NEPSAC season, stepped up as a vocal leader. Johnson said Rhode Island-bound guard Jalen Harper was a bit resistant to doing the little things early in the season, but was representative of a team that committed itself to getting better and gaining the habits needed to win.
It paid off in March. Newman won hard-fought home playoff games over Bridgton and Darrow to reach the Class AAA final, where Morillo went off for 35 points and 10 rebounds and Harper had his best game of the season with 26 points. But it all nearly went terribly wrong. The Cardinals led by 16 with less than four minutes to go before New Hampton made a furious comeback. The Huskies trailed by one in the final seconds when Keyshuan Tillery stole a Newman inbounds pass before Meyer was fouled on a jumper with less than a second on the clock.
Meyer made the first free throw to tie the game before missing the second, sending the game to overtime. On the sidelines, Johnson breathed a sigh of relief. He blamed himself for the game getting to that point; when Newman took a big lead in the final minutes, Johnson got tentative, instructing his team to protect the lead and slow it down, and it cost them.
“I was hoping for a chance to redeem myself because my team played too good of a game to lose it, so it was just very fortunate,” Johnson said.
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Johnson said he was better prepared for overtime, when Newman scored the first eight points and went for the kill.
“We were learning on the fly, so I’m just grateful that we had another opportunity to learn and they stuck with it,” Johnson said. “I was really proud of them.”
After the victory, Johnson reflected on his drive home. He kept coming back to one theme: Gratitude. Among many things, he was most grateful for John Carroll, the former Northfield Mount Hermon coaching legend who joined Newman as the basketball program’s architect, and has served as Johnson’s mentor as he’s navigated this journey of becoming a NEPSAC champion.
“I don’t think this is something I’d be able to do on my own,” Johnson said. “This program, and my learning, and our winning has been fast-tracked because (of) John. I’ve improved quickly and I feel strong as a coach, but I think that would have taken longer. He's been there before and he’s helped and given me space to run the show.”
For Newman, the championship came quickly, but never easily. When adversity came, the Cardinals rose to the occasion.
“It’s been a roller-coaster,” Grodin said. “I feel like we’ve done a great job staying connected and when adversity hits, I feel like we got even tighter. And that’s the main thing, getting tighter when adversity hits. I feel like that game was a big teller of our season. Great, messed up a little bit, took a punch and we punched them right back and we got even tighter.”
