By Michael Letendre
BURLINGTON – When playing the boys basketball squad from Lewis Mills, you’re in for a rough thirty-two minutes of play – win or lose.
And when an undermanned Bristol Eastern squad got behind early against the Spartans on Wednesday night, the visitors ended up playing from behind throughout the showdown.
Mills led wire to wire in its CCC South confrontation against the Lancers, scooping up a 58-34 win from the Thunderdome on the campus of Lewis Mills in Burlington.
The Spartans improved to 4-6 overall while the Lancers fell to 3-8.
Mills scooted out to a 7-0 edge to start the game, extended the advantage to 17 halfway through the second period before snaring a 31-14 lead at the break.
“I said in the scout if [Mills] goes on a spurt, we’re going to have a hard time matching it,” said Eastern coach Bunty Ray. “Once the spurt led to a lead that we couldn’t get to, because to be honest, the personnel that I was moving in and out, we just had bad match-ups. I can’t play zone against them, I can’t play man against them, and you feel helpless. I thought we actually did pretty well in our defense. We weren’t going to be able to hold them out. We needed to be better.”
“Early on, we blew a couple of assignments and then they got a little bit of a lead and now you’ve got to start scoring. Nasir [Walker-Jenkins] comes out of the game with a little bit of foul trouble and now, you have young kids trying to run offense and making just little mistakes but little mistakes get magnified when you’re playing varsity basketball.”
Mills showed good balance offensively as Colby Cables led the squad with 12 points, Charlie Joiner nabbed 11 while Brice Waldron posted 10.
The Spartans canned eight threes as seven different players tallied a 3 to keep Eastern’s defense scrambling throughout.
Overall, Mills shot just under 47-percent from the field for the game.
“The important thing about running offense at the varsity level is that good coaching and good teams are going to take your first options away on offense,” said Mills coach Ryan Raponey. “It’s important to have secondary options. It very important to make extra passes and make the reads because they’re other shots out there available rather than the first one. When you’re forcing shots, you’re not running the offense. But if you’re getting your first option taken off and you’re continuing to move the basketball and find the open man, that’s good offense.”
Eastern never quit but simply couldn’t get baskets to fall, hitting just 10-of-38 shots overall and turning the ball over 16 times.
Nasir Walker-Jenkins led all players with 13 points while chipping in four rebounds, three assists and two steals over a complete game effort.
While no other player scored in double-figures, Isaiah Lawrence-Bynum had another good game – posting eight points, on 3-of-3 shooting, while nabbing 10 rebounds – and was a pest defensively.
“The good thing about him is that you can challenge him,” said Ray of Bynum-Lawrence. “Early on, he made some defensive mistakes again and we were able to come in and he made an adjustment and really kind of forced Mills to then push the ball out. That’s what kind of kept us in the game because they were beating us inside to the basket with some drives and some other things. Isaiah did a good job then playing position, going to the boards, and doing his job. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done.”
“He was a bright spot. His minutes were high because of the physicality. Without [Elijah] Borgelin out there, there’s not a lot of physicality. He gives us a little muscle so to speak.”
Eastern’s Brayden Dauphinais added four points and four rebounds, Lukas Sward had four points and three boards, while Nate Fries started and added four rebounds to the till.
Jerry Tatum, Ben D’Amato, and Dante DePass all played double-figure minutes for the Lancers.
After Mills nabbed the initial lead, Walker dropped in a 3 and off two charity tosses by Dauphinais, the deficit was chopped to 11-5 with 2:04 to play in the first period.
Connor Evans followed with a bucket and Waldron ended the stanza with a 3 as the Spartans led 16-5 though one completed frame.
Mills allowed the Lancers just one field goal make in the second stanza but the Eastern attacked the hoop with zest, canning 7-of-10 free throws.
The Spartans answered as Jon Schibi and Cables drained big 3s midway through the period and one final lay-up from Evans propelled the home team to a 31-14 push at the half – limiting Eastern to just 2-of-17 shooting at the break.
“I would like to think that we were prepared and we’ve been playing pretty solid defense for most of the season,” said Raponey. “But as a coach, there’s obviously things here and there that you can shore up on that end all the time. I thought, for the most part, we did a good job on containing penetration and taking away some of their primary looks.”
Sward and Walker-Jenkins notched Eastern’s first two hoops of the third tilt but the visiting aggression just couldn’t generate enough on the defensive end to trim the deficit.
Walker-Jenkins flipped in three free throws and a lay-up late in the third but when Waldron unloaded a jumper and Gavin Daly splashed in a 3, the squad from Burlington led 57-25 with eight minutes to play.
“Nasir is our only playmaker right now and if other guys are having off nights, there’s no one else,” said Ray. “We needed to make shots. I thought Nasir did a better job actually creating shot opportunities for everyone else and that’s why were able to get some offense at the end of the game.”
Eastern outscored Mills 9-5 over the fourth frame as Fries made a put-back, Walker-Jenkins added a lay-up, DePass canned a free throw and on one final basket by Sward, the Kingstreeters absorbed a tough 58-34 decision on the road.
“We’re just playing and trying to get better,” said Ray. “I’m not going to get frustrated about things that we can’t control. I’ll get frustrated about things we can control. They’re certain things – discipline wise – we could do a better job of at this point of the season. Again, now we’re shuffling new kids in. It feels like we’re always shuffling kids in, just trying to find any combination and every night, is a different problem in [a] CCC [game]. Some nights, you have to handle a press, some nights you have to [handle a] zone, some nights, you have to dig into man. [Raponey] just played us straight man the whole game.”
“It was our lack of offense and play-making ability [that helped lead to the loss].”
Bristol Eastern Boys Basketball – CCC South
LEWIS MILLS 58, BRISTOL EASTERN 34
from the Thunderdome on the campus of Lewis Mills, Burlington
Bristol Eastern (3-8) 5 9 11 9 – 34
Lewis Mills (4-6) 16 15 22 5 – 58
BRISTOL EASTERN (34): Nasir Walker-Jenkins 4 4 13, Jerry Tatum 0 1 1, Lukas Sward 2 0 4, Dante DePass 0 1 1, Ben D’Amato 0 0 0, Brayden Dauphinais 0 4 4, Jalen Stokes 0 0 0, Nate Fries 1 0 2, Lawrence Bynum 3 2 8, Jah Gayle 0 1 1. Totals: 10 13 34.
LEWIS MILLS (58): Brice Waldron 4 1 10, Colby Cables 5 1 12, Logan Cowger 0 1 1, Ryan Mayes 1 0 3, Jon Schibi 2 0 6, Jack Stanislaw 0 0 0, Connor McAtee 2 0 5, Jacob Hall 0 0 0, Charlie Joiner 4 2 11, Connor Evans 2 1 5, Eli Pelletier 0 0 0, Christian Mooney 1 0 2, Gavin Daly 1 0 3, Jack Nestor 0 0 0. Totals: 22 5 58.
Three-point goals: Walker-Jenkins (BE), Waldron (LM), Cables (LM), Mayes (LM), McAtee (LM), Joiner (LM), Schibi (LM) 2.
Records: Lewis Mills 4-6 overall; Bristol Eastern 3-8
