Newburyport Boys Basketball Clinches Victory Over Hudson in Division 3 Opener

NEWBURYPORT — It couldn’t end like this. After the regular season the Newburyport boys basketball team just had, blitzing its way to a 17-3 record and the team’s sixth straight CAL Kinney title, a first-round exit in the playoffs would have felt wrong. Especially considering that on Thursday night, the Clippers were playing a state tournament game in front of their home crowd for the first time in four years. And yet, it nearly ended in heartbreak. For the first half of its Division 3 First Round game, No. 8 Newburyport trailed a No. 25 Hudson team that traveled to…