Eagles go 1-1 in holiday play; eye Plymouth [12/31/2002]

It was a 1-1 week for the Kennett High boys basketball team up in Bethlehem at the Profile Holiday Classic. The boys from Conway suffered a Friday night setback, falling 60-43 to White Mountain, but rallied Saturday to top Wilton, 60-53. All in all, there were far more positives than negatives for the Eagles."Absolutely," Brian Day, Eagles' head coach, said. "I think we did a lot of things well. Hopefully we put into place a foundation we're going to build on. Last year we won the final game of the Farmington tournament, beating a team that was pretty weak. With this win, I think we all felt good about it. The kids were upbeat and eager to get back into the regular season.KHS continued its streak of slow starts Friday and, once again, it proved costly. "White Mountain is pretty decent," Day said, "but we didn't help ourselves as we got stuck in that early hole again and made things tough on ourselves... We did battle back and had a real good third quarter. We were able to cut the lead to five midway through the quarter, but I think we exerted so much energy doing that, we just ran out of gas... We did some very good things defensively in the second half."The Eagles were led offensively by Sean Guinard, who netted 11 points. Ben Day added 9; Ben Kane, 8; Brian Finch, 7; Ben Chase, 2; John MacMillan, 2; Nick Phillips, 2; and Ryan Martin, 2.Kennett came out ready to play early on Saturday and was rewarded. "We pounded the boards real hard, especially on the offensive end. (Brian) Finch, Ben (Day), (Ben) Chase and Joe Downs were extremely aggressive."The Eagles carried a 29-25 lead into the third quarter and never looked back. Finch paced Kennett with 16 points; Guinard added 15; Downs , 10; Kane, 7; Chase, 4; Day, 4; Alex Hamlin, 2; and MacMillan, 2.Kennett is back on the hardwood Friday when Plymouth comes to town for a 7 p.m. tip-off. The Bobcats have been red out, getting off to a 2-0 start including drilling 15 three-pointers in a recent win."They can shoot the ball," Day said. "Playing them right off the bat might not be the best thing in the world for us, but if we can design a little scheme and get things going our way, you never know what can happen."