By Michael Letendre
SEYMOUR – No scholastic team likes to lose in opening round of state tournament play, especially when it’s been the first time in quite a while that the program has been able to reach the postseason.
That’s the situation the Bristol Eastern boys basketball squad found itself in this year, going 10-10 during regular season play and earning a spot in the CIAC Division IV tournament.
And while the 23rd ranked Lancers fell by a 65-43 final to tenth ranked Seymour on March 7, the season was a successful one for the Kingstreeters.
“Absolutely,” said Ray of the season being a success. “I haven’t made the tournament in a long time. We had four wins last year [with] one senior.”
This year, it was more of the same — a one senior crew — but the underclassmen proved to absolutely be a year better, not just a year older.
Eastern leaned heavily on a group of juniors with a little more experience than last year.
And that senior, Nate Fries (3.4 points, 4.9 rebounds-per-game) made gains throughout the campaign while that junior grouping of Brayden Dauphinais (11.7 ppg), Lukas Sward (9.5 ppg) and Ben D’Amato (5.1 ppg, 33 three-pointers) were joined in starting line-up by super sophomore Zaveyn Tate (11.2 points, 7.4 rebounds-per-game).
That whole group combined to put together a very good season.
Again, there’s value in consistency as all five starters started all 21 games at Eastern.
Junior Isaiah Lawrence-Bynum (3.4 points, 3.3 rebounds) joined fellow bench mate Jordan Chisholm (7.3 point, 2.4 rebounds, 27 three-pointers) to make a very good top-seven Ray turned to on a nightly basis.
Sophomore Dante DePass also improved over his season of varsity play while Naseem Walker and Brady Bell also answered the challenge throughout season play.
“[It was the] same group basically,” said Ray. “If you look at all our wins and who we lost to, we lost to everyone who had good years. We lost to the same type of team every time we lost. It was that physical team.”
The Lancers fought to nearly identical .500 records in both home games from the Thomas M. Monahan Gymnasium and on the road.
Eastern also enjoyed a five-game winning streak that started in late December and then, on the flip side, the team suffered through five straight setbacks later in the year.
But Eastern, though losing 10 regular season games, ended up dropping five games between one and seven points.
Eastern was there in one point loses versus Maloney (55-54) and Lewis Mills (49-48) while suffering setbacks to Hall (53-47), Maloney again (48-43) and Bristol Central (59-52), holding leads in all those games before falling in the end.
Only five opponents were able to tally 10-plus point wins against a competitive Eastern bunch this year.
“The scores this year were much tighter,” said Ray. “We put ourselves into a good position. I think we talk about winning and learning, not winning and losing. I thought we taught a lot of lessons this year.”
“I thought we took a lot of lessons on what we were going to do.”
And these lessons certainly paid off.
Eastern will remain in Division IV next season when high school introduces a shot clock — a new wrinkle to the scholastic game.
There will be an adjustment but, if everyone returns to the Eastern team, this squad has the ability to be extremely special with even more improvement in the cards.
“Last year, I was wondering if we were going to be better, not just a year older,” said Ray. “Next year, it’s the same thing.”
And after a spirited game at No. 10 Seymour, which was all knotted up at 26-26 at the half, Eastern is hungry to get back on the hardwood in 2023-24 and take another huge leap forward.
“I saw a lot upset kids in the locker room which was, believe it or not, a good thing,” said Ray of the loss at Seymour. “When you see how much they care about each other, especially our captain Nate Fries. We brought it up on him. The one senior, I saw him out there trying and battling.”
“Some nights it’s just not your night but at the end of the game, everything is okay when you see how much these kids put into it.”
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