Craftsbury senior Dylan Washer (left) heads up the court followed by Twinfield senior Meles Gouge (right). Twinfield-Cabot won 62-41.
MARSHFIELD – The Craftsbury Academy (CA) boys’ basketball team has played undermanned all season, but they showed a lot of fight and improvement in a pair of losses last week under first year coach Brandon Berry.
Twinfield-Cabot erased a halftime deficit behind Eli Russel’s team-high 12 points to get past CA at home last Wednesday 62-41. Dylan Washer led the Chargers with 12 points as they took a 26-25 lead into the break but ran out of gas with only one substitution available on the bench. Sterling Blodgett and Landon Miller chipped in with 10 points apiece in the loss. Sophomore Sam Churchill added 10 points and a game-high 14 rebounds to help the Trojans to improve to 4-5 on the season.
Kason Blood and Kris Fennimore powered the offense to help Blue Mountain outlast the Chargers at home last Friday 51-40. Blood leads the Bucks in scoring at over 19 points a game and helped the Bucks move up to the ninth spot in the current Division IV standings with the win. The Chargers are still in search of their first win of the season, but Berry has seen noticeable improvement the last couple of weeks and eyes a breakthrough coming soon for his young team.
“With this team and our small numbers, it’s mostly getting the experience of playing 5 on 5 varsity basketball. That experience is hard to replicate with limited numbers in practice. It seems like every game we start to figure it out a little more,” said Berry.
The Chargers hosted Christ Covenant on Monday, will stay at home for a matchup with Oxbow on Wednesday, before wrapping up a busy week with a road trip to Danville on Friday.
Bears Win Fifth Straight
DANVILLE – The Danville boys’ basketball team handled Blue Mountain and Williamstown last week, vaulting up to the second spot in the Division IV standings with an 8-2 record.
Andrew Joncas poured in 25 points, including five three-pointers to lead the Bears to a dominant 63-26 home win over Blue Mountain last Wednesday. Cooper Calkins chipped in with 12 points in the win. Andrew Raymond scored a season-high 26 points and pulled down 13 rebounds on Friday night as Danville cooled down a red-hot Williamstown team at home 67-54. Joncas had another strong night with 18 and is averaging just under 25 points per game on the season. Evan Bailey led the Blue Devils with an impressive 35-point performance, but it wasn’t enough as they dropped to 5-4 and down to fourth in the current divisional standings. The Bears have won five straight and trail top-seeded West Rutland by percentage points.
Danville will hit the road to take on Division III BFA-Fairfax on Wednesday before welcoming Craftsbury Academy to town on Friday night.
