WINSTED — After some eye-opening upsets, defending league champion Lewis Mills helped tilt the Berkshire League boys basketball world back upright with a 71-29 pounding of Gilbert Wednesday night at The Gilbert School.
Mills and Wamogo began the season as co-favorites, but Shepaug came out of the shadows for a five-point win over the Warriors two days after Christmas and Northwestern — also picked to be near the top — proved its point with a 64-36 beat-down over the Spartans a week later.
With Gilbert out to a surprisingly good 2-1 start, the question for BL fans was whether this would be a topsy-turvy year in the Northwest Corner.
Mills was quick to provide its own answer at Gilbert.
“That Northwestern game was a wake-up call for us,” Spartan coach Jim Barone said. “Last year, we were the underdogs. This year, we’re learning to play with a target on our backs.
“Northwestern was motivated last week. I’ve seen them play three times this year and this time they were on fire. They must have made more than 65 percent of their shots.
“So we looked at ourselves in the mirror and asked, ‘Did we compete?’ We had to get our offense going and the focus has been to embody a team culture with an emphasis on defense.”
Meanwhile, the Yellowjackets, with their strong season start, had other ideas. For the game’s first four minutes, they were right with the Spartans, throwing up a full court press on defense, crashing the boards for a putback by Juan Sarmiento and a three by Riley Weiss (team-high 12 points on four 3s).
With 4:08 lef in the first quarter, the score was tied at 5-5.
Then the Spartan defense kicked in with a steal by Kyle Alvarez and Mills’ running game found its rhythm.
Gilbert’s outside shots stopped falling and the Spartans made the extra pass or two on offense for points inside and out. They led 18-5 by the end of the period and, despite a second-quarter Yellowjacket rally spearheaded by back-to-back threes from Weiss and Dylan Crowley, the Spartans were well on their way to giving Barone exactly what he wanted.
Through bulges of 30-19 at the half to 53-24 after three quarters, seven Spartans shared the scoring, led by 17 apiece for Alvarez and Jackson Lord and 12 for Josh Schibi.
The Mills defense created 15 turnovers for the Yellowjackets.
“With them coming off a bad loss, we knew what to expect,” Gilbert coach Mark Douglass said. “We’re a good shooting team, but we didn’t shoot well at all tonight. We’re young and we need to figure out what else to do when that happens.”
Meanwhile, the Spartans went a long way toward solving their own Berkshire League puzzle.