Bradford, Vt.
With a deep bend of his shooting arm and an explosive pop off the ground, it’s a shot that’s impossible to miss, mixed with a fearlessness to launch the ball from wherever he finds himself on the court. It was a tool crafted to help Emerson stand out as a freshman with the Oxbow High boys basketball team that was perfected over thousands of shooting drills and countless Sunday morning practices with O’s head coach Steve Carson.
It is ironic, then, that the long-range, sharpshooting Emerson’s 1,000th varsity point came, on Monday night, on a shot underneath the basket off an inbounds pass. The Olympian senior went up, surrounded by defenders, and banked in a layup with 1 minute, 27 seconds left in third quarter of a 51-48 win over Lyndon to become the sixth athlete in program history, and first in 14 years, to reach the milestone.
“I was surprised,” said Emerson, the Newbury, Vt., resident who has scored a career-high 350 points this winter, leading all Upper Valley scorers with 21.73 points per game entering the night. “The back cut was just there, so I went for it. I was open so I just took the floor.
“The thing is, in my mind the whole time, in my head, I thought, ‘It’s going to be a 3. I’m going to hit it on a 3,’ ” he added. “That was just the shot I took, and it happened to be it.”
Emerson is the first to score 1,000 points since Shane Claflin finished his career with 1,146 career points in 2004. Jamie Kingsbury, who graduated in 1993, leads the program with 1,951 career points. Oxbow grads Rob Huntington (1,176, 1982), Frank Merola (1,100, 1975) and Steve Ward (1,020, 1974) also reached the mark.
“Emerson is a big name around here,” he said. “It’s nice to be the first one up there.”
Emerson finished the game with 24 points, including six 3-pointers, as Oxbow (9-7) erased a 13-point deficit in the second quarter to rally past one of the top teams in D-I. The loss was only Lyndon’s third of the year.
Lincoln Ilsley and Orin Mahikoa each added 10 points for the Olympians, who are 4-2 in their last six games.
Oxbow tied the game on an Ilsley 3-pointer midway through the third quarter, and took the lead early in the fourth thanks to seven straight points from Emerson — a layup, a 3-pointer and two free throws. Lyndon (14-3) never fully recovered, as the O’s made four of their last six free throws for the win.
“That’s the biggest win I’ve had in my four years,” said Carson. “Three weeks ago, we hit rock bottom. We played terrible at Montpelier (a 81-54 loss on Jan. 31). We’ve spent a lot of time talking about things that aren’t Xs and Os. … A lot of little things have come together, and I hope they now know what they can do when they play with that energy and play together.”
“That was huge,” added Emerson on the result. “Easily our biggest win of the year, probably the biggest win of my career.”
But even with the come-from-behind victory, the night seemed to be Emerson’s from the beginning. A whiteboard in the corner of the gym displayed how many points he needed to get to 1,000, and each shot he made, particularly two contested 3s in the first quarter, drew an emphatic reaction from the crowd.
“I tried to keep my head and not think about it as much, not to make it different than any other game,” Emerson said.
Emerson said the final stretch of the regular season feels like the home stretch of what was a long, winding road. Carson’s focus is now on the postseason, with Emerson’s milestone and team’s best performance of the season in its collective back pocket.
“I couldn’t be happier with how everything turned out,” Carson said. “(Emerson) has just been driven from day one to be like that. You hear the stories about Manny Ramirez (former Red Sox outfielder) taking 1,000 swings. He’s got that gene.”
Oxbow hosts Williamstown on Wednesday.
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.