MANCHESTER — Jeff Holmes knows his Exeter High School boys basketball team is bursting with talent. He deployed 10 guys by the end of Monday’s first quarter at Trinity, and by the end of the half, his Blue Hawks had assembled a commanding 44-20 lead.
But the 21-year Exeter coach, through six games, has seen a missing gene with this group. State champions tend to have a certain ruthlessness — a killer instinct to finish off opponents when there's blood in the water.
Monday’s second half against winless Trinity presented the perfect opportunity.
“He put the starters in to start the second half, and he said, ‘I want to look up there in two minutes and see (the lead) at 30’,” Exeter senior Ethan Pollet said. “And I think it went the opposite way.”
“That 24-point lead didn’t balloon to 30,” Holmes would say later. “It ballooned to 14.”
The state of the Exeter boys basketball team is a solid one — 6-0 and the lone undefeated team left standing in Division I. But these Blue Hawks are barely scratching the surface of the team they can be, and Monday’s 70-56 win over the Pioneers was the latest example.
“It’s good to learn lessons and win,” Holmes said. “We learned a lesson against BG and we won (56-53). We learned a lesson (Monday) and we won. You can’t let down your guard.”
Exeter looked scary good in Monday’s first half, owning the offensive and defensive boards while building an 18-5 lead. Cody Morissette hit a pair of 3-pointers during a 12-0 Exeter run, and the Hawks added a 10-0 spurt in the second quarter to build their 24-point halftime lead.
All that momentum had fizzled by the start of the third. Trinity outscored the Blue Hawks 14-10 in the that quarter and 36-26 in the second half.
“We came out a little sluggish and we turned the ball over a lot more,” Exeter senior Nick Perrella said. “We had two turnovers in the first half and nine in the second half, so there was a pretty big difference in our play.”
“They outplayed us in the second half,” Holmes said. “We had the lead, so the outcome wasn’t really in doubt. But it would have been good if we played at a higher level.”
The Blue Hawks have a deep and dynamic roster this season, which is why they were picked by the majority of the state’s prognosticators as the preseason No. 1. But they’ve also added some shiny new parts and are still ironing out some kinks.
Freshman wing player Josh Morissette has made an instant impact, attacking both inside and outside the 3-point line and averaging a team-best 15.5 points per game. He’s formed a nice 1-2 scoring punch with his older brother Cody, whose averaging 14.8 a game.
Perrella (8.0), Bobby Cliche (6.1) and sophomore Ryan Grijalva (6.0) are other scoring leaders for a team that on some nights will go 10 to 12 deep. Ethan Imbimbo, Pollet, Cam Clark, Jake Ross and Nick Datillo are all rotation guys. Another guard, Max Rose, did some nice things off the bench in Monday’s win.
“Pretty much our whole team can play,” Perralla said. “Not everybody’s going to get in as much as they want, but we have confidence in our players. We all know they have the ability to score and defend, no matter who’s out there.”
Searching for defensive consistency
Dover coach Matt Fennessy figured he had a potential D-I tournament team on his hands this season with a strong nucleus back.
But they needed to play defesne start to finish. Like last year, that hasn't always been the case.
It hasn't helped that the Green Wave (1-5) have played much of the D-I iron over the first part of the season.
Tuesday Dover lost at 5-1 Alvirne, 77-69, led by Ty Vitko's 23 points.
"It comes back to the defensive end," Fennessy said. "It's hard to win in Division I giving up 70 points. We haven't found it in us to really dig down on the defensive end. We need stops."
Their five losses are to teams in the top seven with a combined record of 22-5.
The Alvirne loss came at a cost. Senior forward John Cantwell went down with an ankle injury late in the third quarter and did not return.
Fennessy said he didn't know the extent of the injury, but that "I imagine he'll be out for a little bit. It changed the complexion of the game Tuesday. Every team goes through that."
Now Dover is in a stretch where it could make some traction. They host Nashua North (1-4) Friday, Pinkerton (1-4) Wednesday and then have a big game at Spaulding (1-5) next Friday — a potential must-win for both teams considering their current situations.
"I feel like we're kind of similar," Fennessy said. "We've both been in games. It's also who you are playing and when."
Spaulding, like Dover, has ran into the D-I iron early on as well.
NOTES
Portsmouth 45-42 win over the Spaulding boys Tuesday night in Rochester had two significant runs by each team. The Clippers started the game with a 14-3 surge and the Red Raiders made a late 14-2 spurt to close the gap to one, 43-42. ... The Farmington boys will finally play a game Friday night against Colebrook at 7 p.m. Farmington has played just one game in 20 days coming into Friday (a 71-44 loss to Pittsfield on Jan. 8). They had two games postponed due to either the cold or the snow.