Woodstock
Woodstock dominated the second quarter of its Thursday night matchup against visiting Bellows Falls and held off a second-half surge by the Terriers in a 73-59 win at Dailey Gymansium.
Senior inside man Gabe Marsicovetere led the way with a game-high 18 points to help the Wasps improve to 2-1.
“We started to come into it, finally,” said Carey, in his third season at the helm. “Defensively and offensively, we have yet to put both ends of the court together. This was good to see from them.”
Carey walked away from the game with a glimpse at what could be, on a team littered with a handful of semi-new faces. Five seniors on this year’s squad — Emilio Montano, Caden White, Micah Schlabach, Kyle Gordon and Terrance Stone — took a season off from basketball last winter. They return to a team that went 12-10 overall last year and fell to Fair Haven in the VPA Division II quarterfinals. Woodstock’s roster is made up entirely of upperclassmen.
“They would have been starters the year before, as well,” Carey said. “Our potential was pretty big to be a scoring team. Tonight’s the first night we really showed it, our capability of putting points up on the board. But we didn’t really have a great second half; we kind of let loose a little bit with our defensive presence a little bit. We have to learn to finish games out.”
“There’s a lot of skill there,” he added on the incoming senior group. “I think the basketball IQ needs to get bolstered up a little bit more. But that’ll come around. As they play more games and they start to see things on the floor that they don’t necessarily see in practice, that’s going to come around.”
Woodstock took a 21-12 into the second quarter, capped by a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by White. The Wasps then went on a 10-2 run to build its lead even more, with another White 3-pointer providing the exclamation mark with 5 minutes, 51 seconds to go in the half. A Bellows Falls timeout after White’s 3 couldn’t stop the momentum.
Woodstock outscored the Terriers, 13-6, in the last 5:51 of the second stanza, taking a 44-20 lead into the intermission.
“They simply out-hustled us,” Bellows Falls coach Ryan Stoodley said. “We didn’t get back on defense. Give it to them, they took it and gave it to us. We didn’t play great transition. … There wasn’t just one guy; every single time they rotated in they were making their shots. It’s hard to compete with that. They were doing what we want to do to people.”
Bellows Falls climbed back into the game after the break, out-scoring the Wasps, 17-9, in the third quarter and 39-29 in the second half. A 3-pointer by Terriers’ Joe Terry — who tied for the team lead with 14 points and sank a game-high three 3’s — with 5:30 remaining in the fourth quarter cut Woodstock’s lead to 53-46, its smallest margin since the first. But the Wasp responded with an 11-0 run over the next minute of play, putting the game out of reach.
“I told them at half, it’d be one thing to just win the second half. We smoked them in the second half,” Stoodley said. “I really wish we played them again, but we don’t. … We just had a bad quarter.”
Bellows Falls junior Isaac Wilkinson scored 14 points — 12 in the fourth quarter, taking advantage of a pesky habit of finding himself wide open underneath the basket. Ryan Kelly netted 13 points for the Terriers, which fell to 2-1.
Marsicovetere’s biggest points came in the fourth quarter, when two free throws and a contested shot underneath the hoop stopped a 9-0 Bellows Falls run. Harrison Morse added 15 points for Woodstock and White netted 11 in the victory.
“We’re a pretty raw team; we have a lot of kids who have to give a lot of minutes who didn’t play last year. That’s going to take some time,” Carey said. “Game experience is what we really need.”
It helps, Carey said, when his athletes are used to winning. A large chunk of his varsity roster either won a D-III football title or went to a D-II boys soccer final in the fall. Hopefully, he said, the experience of knowing what it takes to win can carry over onto the hardwood.
“In the grind of a long season, I’m hoping that’s going to be the benefit of all those kids making it that far,” Carey said.
Woodstock travels to Hartford next Thursday.
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.