By Michael Letendre
BURLINGTON – After a tough couple games to end a grueling road trip, the Bristol Eastern boys basketball team returns home tonight — for the first time since last February — to the Thomas M. Monahan Gymnasium for a showdown against CCC interdivisional foe Tolland (1-3).
Since winning their first game, a 52-41 triumph over Hartford Public on Dec. 14, the Eagles have lost three straight and the Lancers are hoping to make it four in a row.
At 4-2 overall, Eastern will looking to break a two-game hex and have a great chance of doing exactly that against Tolland.
Outside shooting slump
Over the past four games, Eastern’s three-point shooting percentages have been a bit on the low side.
The Lancers are shooting 19-percent from the three-point stripe over its past four games and that percentage must improve if the squad wants to keep opposing defenses guessing and on their heels.
“I just told the kids, we just lost two in a row to two pretty good teams,” said Eastern coach Bunty Ray after the Lewis Mills setback. “And two teams that were taking things away from us. Now, we have to back and find our identity. Our offense the last two games has not been good. It’s partly fundamentals, partly it’s the other team kind of doing different things to us. We need to go back to the drawing board.”
Eastern likes the three…
Like many programs around the state, Eastern has embraced the long-ball though sometimes, those pesky three-pointers simply don’t want to fall through the net.
In the 55-51 setback to Mills on Wednesday night, the Spartans made five more 3s than Eastern — making a big difference in the ultimate result.
The Lancers missed 9-of-11 attempts from deep as Lukas Sward and sharpshooter Ben D’Amato each kicked in a 3.
But those trifectas came over a stretch of five minutes in the second quarter and the locals did not make one during second half play.
Now, Eastern standouts such as Zaveyn Tate, the squad’s most athletic player, was 7-of-8 from two-point territory over a huge 20-point showing against Mills.
If the players around him, such as Jordan Chisholm (5-of-8 from two at Mills) who leads the team in three-pointers made with 10, the offense will quickly get back on track.
“We need to start knocking down some perimeter shots,” said Ray. “We haven’t been knocking down many perimeter shots over the last few games. At least we were able to go inside and get some easy hoops for us when we started driving.”
“The name of the game is you have to knockdown a few perimeter shots. We’re not doing that right now.”
Welcome home Lancers
All that play on the road led to a pretty good ledger to begin the campaign and Ray would have been pleased with a .500 start.
But with the friendly lights of the Thomas M. Monahan gymnasium shining brightly on Friday night, this Eastern squad is ready to finally get back to work from home.
And there’s absolutely no place like home.
Those rims are ready to gobble up as many three-point bombs as it can get from Brayden Dauphinais, Sward, D’Amato and Chisholm along with Brady Bell and Tate.
And once Chisholm gets that first three to fall, several more will be on the way.
“We just have to go back and get into our offenses little bit better,” said Ray. “We need to get some rhythm threes and knock some shots down. We talk about defense and what [Mills] did to us inside, but at the end of the day, we had looks that didn’t convert.”
“If you’re not knocking down shots, the energy changes on the other end and those are open looks that we got. They didn’t take much away in that regard.”
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