St. Thomas More Tourney Recap

Bridgton basketball traveled to Connecticut this weekend to participate in the St. Thomas More Invitational Tournament. The field included instate rival MCI, Champlain, as well as the hosts.

Bridgton's first round match up was with Champlain. The Wolverines came out on fire leading 22-5 midway through the first half, but sloppy play and unforced turnovers costs BA as they saw their lead shrunk to 36-30 at the half.

The second half saw Champlain continue to come back, and then pull away from the struggling Wolverines for a final score of 69-58. Bridgton, out of sync for the final three quarters of the game, got in foul trouble and Champlain took advantage going 23 for 32 from the line, while Bridgton was only 7 of 12.

Three players registered double digits for the black and gray, Chance Jones (Knoxville, TN) with 14, Alex Harris (Richmond, CA) 14 and Paul Dick (Belfast, Ireland) 11.

Following the game Coach Lesure said, "We shot ourselves in the foot. We cannot make that many errors when we are playing well. You have to stay in the trance. Opportunity is a fickle friend."

In the second game Bridgton squared off against MCI, whom they had lost to earlier in the year at home. The Wolverines woes continued from the first game, as they could not buy a basket and found themselves trailing 15-2 early on. Solid bench play allowed BA to fight its way back into the game and make it 28-22 MCI at the half.

Chance Jones hit a three to start the second half and cut the deficit to three, where it would stay for the majority of the half, before MCI pulled away and stretched the lead to ten. Bridgton was able to come within seven, but could not convert after that and turnovers allowed MCI to put the Wolverines away, 70-57.

MCI's Steve Roundtree led all scorers with 30 points to go along with 22 rebounds. 11 Bridgton players scored in the losing effort.

"The better team won, " said Lesure. He went on to say, "They have defeated us twice. We do not match up well with them and they are very well coached. Our only answer that I'm aware of is playing harder and cutting down on the mistakes at both ends that really hurt. Our margin for error is something we must confront in order to improve if we want to win in this league."

Bridgton sees its record fall to 3-4 in NEPSAC and 6-8 overall. Bridgton plays next at NEPSAC power Brewster Academy on Wednesday, January 27th at 6PM.