Chris Bramanti Helps Grey Ghosts Exceed Expectations

The following questions were answered by Westford Academy boys basketball coach Chris Bramanti, who led the team to the No. 3 seed in the North Division 1 postseason. The Grey Ghosts were upset by Haverhill in their tournament opener on Tuesday night. Among the highlights of the year for Westford was a regular season 66-64 victory over North Andover, which is ranked by ESPNBoston as the No. 11 team in the state.

What have you most enjoyed about this season?

We’ve been very fortunate and taken advantage of situations with other teams earlier in the year. We’ve had two outstanding seniors Troy Faretra and Justin Mount who just led us every day, every practice, every game. I’ve been coaching for a lot of years, but this team has just played, enjoyed each other, liked playing with each other, and genuinely enjoy being on the court. It made it very easy to work together. I think that’s been the biggest key is the players set aside their egos and agendas and played basketball. Not too many people expected us to be where we are. The players allowed us to coach them, they listened and we took advantage of some lucky bounces along the way.

What did the win over state No. 11 North Andover mean to your team?

It’s one of those Merrimack Valley Conference-Dual County League battles. The MVC is a strong league and we felt if we could compete with North Andover, they’re a top five team in the state. Our goal was to make sure we stayed in it. If we could stay in it, we’d have a chance. The kids were really excited. They had the confidence that they could play with these guys. We beat some teams we weren’t supposed to beat and it added another step in our ladder.

Why has this year been such a successful season? 

Our mantra has been don’t be outworked. If we can go in and work as hard as we can and execute as we have, we will be fine. There are no easy game and we try to make that clear to them. We have to execute as hard as we can and we can compete with anybody. If we’re in it at the end, we’ll have a chance. We’re viewed as the underdog, and moving forward we have to embrace that and work that much harder to garner that much respect.

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