BRADFORD, Vt. — The battle to break Vermont basketball’s most unfortunate streak will be a tough one, but Oxbow continues to fight — and have fun doing it.
The Olympian boys battled all night with Division IV title contender Williamstown and gave the strong home crowd plenty of thrills, but ultimately couldn’t match the combined shooting prowess and height of the visitors to fall 71-45 on Tuesday night at Garone Gymnasium.
With the loss, Oxbow drops to 4-3, as the fight to beat a 23-year-old streak continues. Division III Oxbow has not had a winning season since 2002, the longest active streak in Vermont high school basketball, and has won just two playoff games in that span.
“For me personally as a coach, my goal has always been to get to or get over .500,” Oxbow coach Jesse Ellsworth said. “My first year we won five, last year we won seven, so we’re hoping to just keep building on, chipping away. … I mean, obviously, everyone wants to start the season and go to the Aud. All these kids have dreamed about it since they were little. From a coaching standpoint, I think if we could finish over .500, that’d be huge.”
Against Williamstown, a team with loads of experience in winning, Oxbow presented the vision for how the streak could be broken and where the team currently is. The Olympians effectively contained Blue Devil star big man Nick Mascitti, holding him to just six points as he struggled with foul trouble. But they surrendered 10 three-pointers and a plethora of offensive rebounds and couldn’t crack Williamstown’s stout defense as the lead extended.
Oxbow was outscored 39-18 from the start of the second quarter to the end of the third, including a 15-5 margin in the third, after a promising 14-14 start.
“They’re big, they’re physical, so we’re undersized against them,” said Ellsworth. “They’re a really good team, one of the more physical — I’d say the most physical team we played besides Hartford.”
Jayden Huntoon kept the Oxbow offense afloat with a 30-point night, including 17 in the first half, but the other Olympians struggled to keep pace. Just four Olympians managed to score.
“He had some flashes of it as a junior, we know he can shoot it,” said Ellsworth. “His shooting in the first half definitely kept us in it.”
The task only grew harder for Oxbow when athletic wing Kobin Ellsworth, who’d been Oxbow’s leading scorer in several games and had the play of the night with a skyscraping block, took a hard fall late in the third quarter and exited the game. Forced to go to a bench that has no varsity experience prior to this year, Oxbow struggled to score down the stretch.
“As the season goes, we’ll be able to go deeper,” coach Ellsworth said. “It’s just getting that experience.”
Oxbow’s quest gets no easier as the Olympians host D-II contender Spaulding on Wednesday, but rematches with Danville, Thetford, Northfield and Blue Mountain — all teams Oxbow has already beaten — offer hope that this could be the year they finish with more wins than losses.