Sunapee
“You can take out the F-bombs, right?” he said with a laugh.
Maybe what the rebuilding Lakers needed was a wakeup call.
Sunapee, now 5-2 NHIAA, 6-4 overall, under second-year head coach Puchtler, was outscored 45-9 in the first half, a scoreboard illustration that made the game seem closer than what had just been demonstrated on the court.
Pittsfield, with its balanced squad of outside sharpshooters and inside physicality, was relentless from the tip-off, creating more turnovers than Sunapee had points through the game’s first two quarters. It held the Lakers to just three points in the first quarter and started the game on a 14-0 run that seemed to indicate to the near 150 in attendance that things had already gotten out of hand.
Sunapee’s first and only basket of the first quarter was a 3-pointer from senior Cade Robinson with 3 minutes, 24 seconds remaining, ending Pittsfield’s opening charge.
“It’s composure,” Puchtler said. “It’s been a problem for this team all year, not having bad play become worse play by letting problems compound themselves. A lot of it comes down to experience.”
Sunapee’s offense found little life in the second half, much of which was played against Pittsfield’s bench. The Panthers (7-1) led, 66-25, after the third quarter. Senior Cam Darrah led all scorers with 22 points, and junior Dylan Bocash added 19 points.
“We had a lot of missed shots that usually fall for us,” said Sunapee sophomore Zack Belisle, who led all Lakers with nine points. “We weren’t getting a lot of boards. We were getting bodied. … We’re frustrated. Going to come back to practice and work a lot harder than we had been.”
Rebuilds can be volatile before a pattern of consistency can be established, which the Lakers seem to be illustrating. Their last four games over the last three weeks, all wins, came against teams with sub-.500 records: winless Nute and Concord Christian, Hinsdale (2-4) and Colebrook (1-7).
“Our schedule has been conducive with us being successful,” Puchtler said. “We were going to run into a team like this eventually. Tonight was the night.”
Puchtler said his squad doesn’t have the experience yet to play consistently strong and blamed some of Tuesday’s blowout loss on complacency. Either way, the end result seemed to have a lasting effect on players and coach.
“Maybe it’s something this team needed to wake up and realize that they’ve got to start working harder in practice and start paying attention to what needs to be done,” he said. “The biggest thing for this team right now, they need to start coming together as a group. They need to start trusting each other.”
Sunapee will try to get back on track on the road against Gorham (1-6) on Friday, kicking off a five-game road trip that will end with games against D-III’s Newport and undefeated D-IV foe Derryfield.
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.