By Michael Letendre 

BRISTOL – Unless you have a 7-foot-2 giant on your boys basketball squad, a scholastic team going 20-0 over regular season play is not exactly feasible.

Losses and setbacks are part of just about everyone’s schedule and the boys program over at Bristol Eastern is no exception.

The Kingstreeters starting the campaign off at 4-0 was a tremendous beginning as the team has beaten the likes of Platt and Bristol Central.

However, the 50-27 loss to Simsbury on Friday at the BC Holiday Classic was the fifth straight road game for the locals and the first defeat for the Kingstreeters.

“This is a tough stretch,” said Eastern coach Bunty Ray. “This is our fifth road game. We have another road game to go. If you were going to tell me we were 4-1 after this stretch, I would have said, ‘listen, that’s not bad.’ A lot of teams would like to be in our position.”

Despite having played its last two games in Bristol, it was at the Charles C. Marsh Gymnasium — a facility the Lancers have not historically shot well in.

Eastern has been riding the wave of success for most of the month of December but just ran into a buzzsaw in the form of Simsbury.

Defensively, the Lancers had a tough first half but came back to make their usual boatload of stops.

And the Trojans scored only 50 points, just under the average of what Eastern gives up per game. 

The setback to Simsbury was only the first of the season for the Kingstreeters and the coaching staff at BE is helping to keep that loss in perspective. 

“We’ve just got to guard against those things that can ruin a team early on because you’re so high then you come out and hit a low,” said Ray. “You’ve got to be able to stay in the middle and stay right where you’re supposed to be in terms of your preparation.” 

One of the keys Ray is looking for is how this upperclassmen crew handles such a loss.

A setback like that could have a ripple effect on a program but Ray expects this group to get right work due to the high level of character and chemistry this team has developed.

“For us, the lesson is being able to handle adversity,” said Ray. “Today was the first time I saw some body language I didn’t like. These kids put so much into this and they want to win so much. Now, we’ve just got to go, we’ve got to talk about it, we’ve got to learn from it.” 

“I’m not going to fault them for caring, that’s for sure, because they care and they work hard. It wasn’t going to be an undefeated season. I knew that.”

No one likes to lose and that 23-point defeat should help fuel the unit of Zaveyn Tate, Jordan Chisholm, Brady Bell, Ben D’Amato, Isaiah Lawrence-Bynum, Naseem Walker and captains Lukas Sward and Brayden Dauphinais.

No loss is a good one but a little motivation heading into a tough place like Lewis Mills (Wednesday, 6:45 p.m.) could be a good thing. 

“This was humbling for us today,” said Ray. “I’ll never say a loss is a good loss but for us, now I want to really see where we’re at. We talked about our maturity and how we’ve played and what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished. Today, we got kicked in the teeth a little bit.” 

“Now, I want to see what we do after this.” 

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