PEMBROKE – Pembroke Academy Coach Shannon Sciria feverishly paced up and down the sideline a few dozen times, shouted at the top of his lungs near his vacant seat on the bench a few less and did anything but stand still during the 32 minutes the Spartans and Bow boys’ basketball team were on the hardwood Friday night.

For a fired up Sciria, it was just another day at the office. That’s how he coaches and he doesn’t know any other way.

“I really challenged these guys to make defense an effort thing as much as it can be because sometimes its just about buckling down and having that heart. That’s how I was as a player and I don’t know any other way to coach to be honest with you,” Sciria said.

His passion and energetic style of coaching certainly rubbed off on the Spartans in the second half. Pembroke turned a seven-point halftime deficit into a six-point lead midway through the third quarter thanks to a 15-2 run and fended off the Falcons down the stretch for a 56-49 victory.

“We were down in the second half so what that means is you have to try and speed up the game and create turnovers,” Sciria said. “We needed more possessions and I was obviously going crazy and I think they fed off of it.”

Following a first-half shootout where the two teams combined for 11 3-pointers, including six alone in the second quarter, Pembroke (5-5) opened the second half on a mission. Before a minute had even ticked off the clock, Jake Sherman (17 points) buried a pair of 3-pointers to put the Falcons (2-8) on their heels and teammate Sean Menard did the rest.

Menard, who hit a pair of buzzer beaters – one at the end of the second and third quarters – finished with a team-high 20 points and five 3-pointers. Menard connected on a triple at the 4:14 mark of the third that put Pembroke on top for good, and his buzzer beater at the end of the frame gave the Spartans a 10-point cushion.

“If he wanted to pull up from Manchester I would probably think about it the way he’s shooting the ball right now,” Sciria said. “That’s a kid that is locked in.”

“Whenever I’m open, he tells me to shoot,” Menard added. “I’m glad the coaches have confidence in me too.”

Despite Menard’s lights-out shooting performance, he was quick to admit the effort on the defensive end of the floor is what led the Spartans to the win and carried them back to .500.

“We really came into practice this week focused on defense because we’ve been giving up the most points in our division,” Menard said. “Our offense isn’t really a problem because we’ve been pouring in the points, but it was really our defense so that was the mindset tonight.”

Bow looked like an unstoppable force in the first half, matching Pembroke shot for shot from behind the arc and executing its inside-outside game with Nate Alford (9 points) and Ryan Andrews (22 points, six 3-pointers) on the way to a 30-23 advantage at the break.

After slipping in the third, the Falcons slowly chipped away at the lead in the final frame, getting a layup from Matt Scanlon (10 points) to make it a six-point game, and then later receiving back-to-back 3-pointers from Andrews to cut it to three with less than two minutes to play. But Pembroke converted on its free throws down the stretch to hang on.

“They shot the ball very well … it’s tricky to get into a game like that with those guys,” Bow Coach Chris Gaudreau said. “It’s hard for high school kids to not get wrapped up in the tempo of things and that’s kind of what happened. ... I’m proud of the boys for fighting back and getting it to one possession there in the fourth quarter. We’re in a bit of a rut right now but they continue to fight and the boys continue to fight and dig and so I’m proud of that.”