Top-seeded NHTI men’s basketball team has eye on title

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As weeks, then months, passed, the streak grew from impressive to outlandish. The NHTI men’s basketball team reeled off 25 straight wins and hadn’t lost since way back in November. Until last week.

The Lynx dropped the Yankee Small College Conference championship game on Feb. 18, then lost a re-scheduled game on Thursday to finish their regular season at 33-3. NHTI had already received a bid, and the top seed, to this week’s USCAA Division II national tournament, so the two losses didn’t affect its postseason positioning. But they still hurt.

“I haven’t seen our team this hurt all season,” said Nick Porter, a 2009 Pembroke Academy graduate. “I feel like we’re ready to kill any team in our path right now.”

NHTI has the maturity to bounce back from these setbacks, a maturity that’s unusual for a school where staying two years is the norm. But this team has five players in their third year, including Porter and Jackson Riel, another PA graduate, and point guard Besfort Syla (a Manchester West grad) has been on the team four years.

“This team really has a mature, veteran feel to it. They have tremendous belief in each other and they believe they can win,” said Paul Hogan, now in his 13th year as NHTI’s head coach.

“I’m very confident. I think the mood of the team is good, they’re fresh and their focus is good. We’re going to bounce back from this and be good.”

Hogan knows what he’s talking about. The coach has led NHTI to the national tournament 10 times, had three other teams seeded No. 1 and won it all with the Lynx in 2005.

There are also some understandable reasons for the two recent defeats. The 80-66 loss in the conference title game came against a very good team in Vermont Tech, which is seeded No. 7 in the upcoming USCAA tournament (10 teams, double elimination). And NHTI had already beaten Vermont Tech twice this season, and it is difficult beating a good team multiple times.

The second loss was a 98-91 decision at Dean College, which is one of the top teams at its junior college level (technically a “higher” level of basketball than NHTI’s). Plus, Hogan kept Riel out of that contest to rest his injured hand, and the coach limited the minutes of his top two scorers, Ahntwan Harris and Terry Williams, who are both nursing bumps and bruises at the tail end of a long season.

“If anything, we can just learn what we need to do better and try to take some good out of it,” said Riel, who is averaging 11.1 ppg in a sixth-man role. “As much as it stinks to lose, we’d rather lose now than down at nationals.”

The Lynx, who have a first-round bye, will play their first game of the USCAA tournament in Uniontown, Pa., on Thursday against the winner of the No. 9 Albany College of Pharmacy vs. No. 8 Warren Wilson College game. It can be seen live at uscaabasketball.prestosports.com. If NHTI can take that one, it would advance to the semifinals on Friday, with the championship game scheduled for Saturday night. And that title game is the very reason so many of the Lynx came back this year.

“We all just decided, why not stick around one more year and get it done,” said Porter, a defensive-minded forward who is averaging 4.9 points and 5.0 rebounds per game. “And it shows from our record that we clicked, for sure.”

“Probably the biggest difference between this year and last year (when NHTI went 25-14) is everybody has bought into the system,” Riel said. “Everyone knows what we have to do to reach our goal, and we all want the same thing, to be the best.”

When they’re clicking on all cylinders on the court, the Lynx are entertaining. They like to fast break and press, and are averaging 86.8 points per game, the top mark at their level.

“I always describe us as dogs. When we’re doing our best, we’re playing defense, and we’re such a fast team that our defense leads to offense,” Porter said. “When we’re getting stops, hitting the outlet pass, getting fast breaks, and everything is in rhythm, that’s when we’re at our best and we’re hard to stop.”

Porter is at the heart of that defense, along with 6-foot-6 center Demetrius Rouse, who leads the team with 6.8 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game. But all of the Lynx have dedicated themselves to defense this year, including Harris and his team-high 18.7 points per game. He’s an athletic 6-3 wing player with 3-point range and this season he’s also been handling one of the tougher defensive assignments each game.

Syla (11.6 points, 3.8 assists, 1.8 steals) is a streaky shooter who can be “everyone’s worst nightmare when he’s on,” according to Hogan. Williams, another 6-3 forward, rejoined the team in January after taking a year off and has hardly missed a beat, averaging 14.8 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2.1 steals in his 19 games this season.

Hogan also has a versatile bench that starts with Riel but doesn’t end there. He can bring in big bodies like 6-4 Ken Ibizugbe (6.0 points, 4.7 rebounds) or 6-4 Ryan Sweeney from Hudson (2.2 points, 2.6 rebounds). He’s got a dynamic offensive option in Riel, a defensive stopper in guard Adrian Edgerly from Newmarket, and a long-range shooter in Zach Stevens of Londonderry, who will be NHTI’s representative in tonight’s USCAA 3-point shooting contest.

All that depth and diversity is one reason why all these players wanted to come back for another shot. But it goes deeper than that.

“They really enjoy each other’s company, and that’s not true with all teams,” Hogan said. “This team can all sit around in the room and smile and laugh and have fun with each other.”

(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3371 or tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20.)