Basketball Slams Dunks and Opponents
Senior Niko Rocak receives a pass on the post. With a swift spin, he turns to the basket and leaps, determined to take it to the rack. With his left hand, he swipes the defender’s hands out of the way while simultaneously slamming the ball through the hoop with his right hand. When the dust settles and Rocak’s feet return to the court, Love Gymnasium erupts in cheers. Flashy dunks are a signature seal of Big Red’s Boys Varsity basketball team.
Rocak’s dunk came as icing on the cake for a weekend of underdog wins for Big Red. The team traveled to Governor’s Academy on Friday night and escaped with a 62-57 win against a strong onslaught of talent. On Saturday, the team beat Proctor Academy at home with a final score of 62-51. The biggest highlight of the weekend was the fact that both Governor’s and Proctor are in the AA Class, while Exeter is only in the A Class. The two upsets left Big Red with a season record of 8-0.
One cannot recap the Governor’s game without making mention of the performances of Lower Josh Morrissette and PG Declan Porter. Morrissette put up 22 points while Porter sealed the game for Big Red, shooting 75% from the 3-point line. Although Big Red was leading 40-16 at halftime, the game came down to the wire. Rocak commented on the uphill battle that the team faced in the second half: “Even though we were up to twenty, at some point we got caught up in the moment in the second half and had to deal with it. 15 players, 3 coaches, 2 managers against the rest of the gym,” he said.
Upper Lucas McEachern explained some of the mistakes the team made that allowed Governor’s to climb back into the game. Although the Gov’s team made it look like it was going to be a close game at the end, Exeter proved that they were in control all along. In the final minutes of the game, Big Red pulled themselves out of the slump and buried the opposition. Upper Robbie Stankard highlighted a message from Coach Tilton to the team as being a crucial one in the dying minutes: “Coach always tells us that there are going to be times when we aren’t playing well and it’s all about finding other ways to win. We proved that we don’t go away when faced with adversity. The team stayed together to find a win,” he explained.
In the first half of the team’s game against Proctor on Saturday, their fatigue from the night before revealed itself and Big Red fell behind. But, with the classic Exeter fighting spirit, the team battled their way back from being behind. “We weren’t going to let them win,” Stankard stated. “As Coach Tilton likes to say, we grind down our opponents until we come out on top. There is always a definite change in body language in our opponents when we have worn them down. Proctor definitely showed that in the final three minutes of the game,” he said.
It is the unrelenting drive within each player on the team that has carried the Big Red basketball program so far this season. This past weekend has been a successful one, but there were still a few aspects of the game that the team needs to improve upon. “We tend to start a game very well but then we relax in the second half and ease up. We need to maintain our intensity for the entire game,” Rocak said.
At this point in the season, it is safe to say that Big Red is on a roll. The team has not lost a game up to this point and they are on track to finish with a phenomenal record. Part of this achievement can be attributed to the do or die mentality that each player holds within them. McEachern explained what the rest of the season should look like for the team. “We need to be great at everything we do consistently. We need to avoid having periods of time when we don’t do what we need to do well.” In the end, it all comes down to whether or not Big Red can defend the Class A Title that it claimed last season. In the eyes of McEachern and his teammates, this is the goal that gets them out of bed and through each day. “We’re coming for that championship,” he said.