Bishop Hendricken head coach Jamal Gomes was quick to credit his team and its leadership and defense for the Hawks’ 62-57 state title win over La Salle, but the players gave a different reason.

“I don’t think, I know we have the best coach in the league,” junior guard Justin Mazzulla said. “The guy is such a great guy, he’s a family guy. He loves and respects all of us, he loves and respects everyone else. He’s a really great guy, he loves us and he works us to death.”

“He’s the best coach I’ve ever had,” senior forward Trevor Lawton said. “I never doubt this guy, even when we were in the regular season, we’d be down with two minutes left and I’d look at the clock at the end of the game, we’d be up five. He always knows what to do. We feed off of him when he’s calm and it showed today, ’cause we’re champs.”

Hendricken started its 2015-16 state championship run with blowout wins over Johnston and Portsmouth before needing resilience to face a familiar foe in the Final Four.

The Hawks met Classical in the state semifinal, the same squad that defeated them 82-71 for the Division I crown at Brown a couple weeks ago. Purple guards David Duke and Rodney Theodore combined for a blistering 56 points in that matchup, which Hendricken couldn’t afford to surrender again.

After that loss, Gomes said the ultimate goal was the state championship, knowing Classical would probably be an obstacle on the way there.

This time around, Theodore wouldn’t make eight 3-pointers or score 30 points. He didn’t even get one to fall, finishing with four points. Duke managed 19 points, but Classical’s outside game was nowhere near as efficient as it was in the D-I title game. The Hawks secured a state finals berth, defeating the Purple, 62-46.

“We weren’t celebrating in the locker room [Saturday],” Gomes, who coached Hendricken to its second state title in three years, said. “Obviously our goal was to win that game, but our goal was to win a championship. So we weren’t celebrating. We enjoyed it, but we had to move on, ’cause in 24 hours you have to play a game. That’s not a lot of time to prepare. So we got into a gym at 11 o’clock [Sunday] morning, then we shared a team meal and here we are.”

The quick turnaround would be difficult for the Hawks, and they struggled to keep up with top-seeded La Salle during the first half. Senior guard Michael McCourt could not be stopped early on, scoring 15 of the Rams’ first 19 points.

La Salle took a 32-25 lead into the half, but the Hawks felt lucky to be down by only that much. Gomes remained cool under pressure, and it translated to his team in the locker room.

“I was very calm in the locker room,” Gomes said. “We were right there, we were kind of fortunate to only be down seven. I thought we were playing hard, but I thought La Salle was able to get in there. McCourt was having some good shot opportunities. We just had to tighten some things up on defense. Tighten it up, and just execute on offense and really control the tempo because it was all La Salle’s tempo in the first half.”

The Hawks took the advice to heart, as they controlled the second half from the start. Hendricken ripped off a 22-4 run to jump out to a build a 47-36 lead.

“Well, we came out firing because we follow our coach,” Mazzulla said. “Our coach wanted us to execute and play defense, and we followed what he wanted us to do and we came out on top.”

McCourt was slowed by the adjusting Hendricken defense, accounting for just eight of the final 38 La Salle points on the night.

“[Coach] just told us that we had to keep battling,” Hendricken senior guard Kyle Henseler said. “We worked all year for this and we knew that when we came out in the second half we just had to execute the game plan.”

As the Rams started to make a run in the final five minutes, Gomes started to strategically use his timeouts. He called one up 52-47 with 4:23 remaining, and another when the Hawks were up 54-51 with 2:21 to go. Henseler lauded the late-game decisions, as “they would calm us down and tell us what we had to do.”

The timeouts worked and the message was sent. The Rams never got closer than three points and Hendricken’s defense carried it down the stretch. Jimmy Pare sank a teardrop shot as the buzzer expired, Lawton grabbed the ball and sent it into the rafters in excitement as Hendricken streamed onto the court.

“It’s a tremendous feeling,” Gomes said. “Not for me, it’s for these seniors and for these young guys who have worked so hard all season long. For them to see what I’ve been talking about all year long, when you put in that time and that effort and you stick together, that’s what I love. I tell them, ‘It’s about you guys. It’s about you guys, it’s not about the coach. It’s about you guys. If you listen, we’ll put you in position to be there. They executed the game plan, it was tremendous.”

When it came time to receive the championship medals, Gomes’ name was announced last. As he walked out to receive it, he signaled for his entire team to come out and join him. It was this family atmosphere that has powered the Hawks all season long, and it all starts with Gomes.

“He’s our leader,” Mazzulla said. “He’s the wolfpack leader, so we follow him.”

“Best coach by far, I love the guy more than anything,” senior guard Dimitri Rosa said.

His players spoke highly of him, but still, for Gomes, they were the reason the Hawks walked off the court as champions. A symbiotic relationship that has Hendricken on top of the Rhode Island basketball world yet again.

“This is an extremely close-knit group,” Gomes said. “It’s been like that all season long. It was like that in the summer time, they were all best friends with each other. That makes it a lot easier to coach, when the kids all enjoy each other and they like each other. You don’t get that every single year as a coach. It also comes down to our leadership: Kyle Henseler, Justin Mazzulla, Dimitri Rosa, Trevor Lawton, Billy Mueller, Andrew Almonte, Matt Sweeney. These seniors, and our leaders, our captains, they keep it together. It’s tremendous.”