WINDSOR — Division alignments have prevented Hartford and Windsor, just sixteen miles apart, from ever matching up in Vermont’s state girls basketball tournament.
But on Monday night, the Hurricanes and Yellowjackets battled it out in a game that felt every bit as intense and important as the ones in March at the Barre Auditorium.
Home crowd versus vocal traveling crowd. Big school versus small school. Senior superstar versus young scrappers. Up and comers versus the Upper Valley’s green-and-gold standard in girls hoops.
When the dust settled from a game that featured 37 fouls, 14 tie ups, and numerous lead changes, it was Hartford, off to its best start in years, finally taking down Windsor.
The Hurricanes erased a 5-point halftime deficit and outscored Windsor 38-18 in the second half to take a 60-45 win.
“We scored more points,” Hartford coach Steve Landon said jokingly when asked what went right. “We haven’t done that down here in quite a while. Execution in the second half, mentally, I think our kids have been playing a lot of minutes and they’re tough kids. That didn’t happen overnight.”
Hartford star and reigning Vermont Gatorade Player of the Year Charlotte Jasmin played nearly every minute, scoring 22 of her game-high 27 points in the second half to power the win.
Facing relentless defense from Windsor junior Callie Spaulding, who guarded her the entire night, the senior guard found enough spots to score and create for teammates to make a difference.
“We wanted to get this done,” said Jasmin. “We’re undefeated, I’ve never started a season with this team undefeated… I’ve never won here.”
Jasmin capped the 10-0 run that put the game out of reach in the fourth quarter with an emblematic sequence: She drilled a deep three pointer and then immediately capitalized on a Windsor inbounds turnover to muscle in a putback, putting Hartford ahead by 13.
“She does stuff that I just haven’t seen another player do,” said Landon. “This is printed all over the place, I used to be the only one to say it, she is the best player in the state of Vermont.”
The Windsor student section certainly didn’t concur, lobbing chants of “OVER-RATED” and various jeers toward the red No. 4 whenever a shot was missed, but coach and player agreed that it only fired her up.
“It is what it is,” said Jasmin. “Gets me going.”
Windsor falls to 5-3 on the year, with all three losses coming to teams in divisions above it. After winning three championships in four years with a highly influential senior class, Kabray Rockwood is in the midst of another on-the-fly rebuild with only two seniors in his seven-player rotation.
“It was our first time seeing their pressure and their length, and we just didn’t handle it very well in the second half,” said Rockwood. “We had some players get in foul trouble, which is usually, when those two are mixed together, a challenge. And they have the Gatorade Player of the Year, who we did a pretty good job on but beat us a few times.”
Sophomore guard Amelia Rockwood paced the Yellowjackets with 15 points, including four makes from beyond the arc. Callie Spaulding matched with 15 points in a stellar two-way effort.
Windsor led 13-11 after a quarter and 27-22 at the break, powered by a 5-2 margin in three-pointers made, but Hartford’s full-court press began causing havoc in the second half. With tall forward Haley Vanasse guarding the inbounds pass, Windsor struggled with getting the ball in and let up a 6-0 run early in the second half to surrender the lead.
With foul trouble and an ankle injury to senior guard Cassie Clark cutting Windsor’s seven-player rotation to just five entering the fourth quarter, the Jacks still mounted a comeback bid.
A Rockwood three pointer sliced the lead to just three with six minutes to play, but Jasmin countered with a floater at the other end. On the next Windsor possession, Lucy Crowley had a steal and breakaway and-one to push the lead to eight and set up Jasmin’s crucial five-point sequence.
Windsor never drew closer than nine as Hartford closed the night out.
“Some games you have that you get the 50-50 balls, you get the balls that are up in the air, we just didn’t get those tonight,” said Rockwood.
Both coaches emphasized that for as big a game as this was, it was only part of the process in seasons where the goal is a trip to the Barre Auditorium and a state title.
“We lost some big seniors last year, so a lot of kids are stepping into roles that are new to them,” said Rockwood. “We play for March, we don’t play for January. We’ll definitely look at this and close the gap on some of those things and be ready for our next opponents.”
Windsor has lost multiple games in all six of its championship-winning seasons since 2000.
“One game doesn’t define this team, and it’s not going to,” said Landon. “So however tonight went, when we leave the locker room, we have a team rule: that game’s over, we move on to the next one.”
Both teams face Otter Valley next, with Windsor hosting the Otters on Thursday while Hartford travels to the “House of Noise” in Brandon on Saturday.