If there were any visible Saturday night, they might have been from the Vikings hitting the deck after a vicious, first-quarter knockout.
The Broncos put on a half-court clinic at both ends in the opening period and made it a winning week away from home in style, breezing to a 73-38 victory.
“We knew it was going to be a long week,” Hampden coach Russ Bartlett said. “If you told me at the beginning we would be able to go 2-1, I would have been pretty happy with that.”
Without a single senior starter in its lineup, Hampden (14-2) remains in the hunt for the No. 1 seed in the regional tournament.
Junior Brendan McIntyre led all scorers with 19 points. Freshman brother Ian McIntyre supplemented that with 17, all but six in the first quarter. Three-year starter and point guard Nick Gilpin added 15 points, 13 rebounds and five assists.
The opening minutes were a perfect storm to punctuate a weather-beaten January. Hampden shot 11-for-18 from the field while holding Oxford Hills (9-7) to 2-for-16.
Three timeouts by Vikings coach Scott Graffam couldn’t slow the onslaught by the Broncos, who scored 19 unanswered points in a span of just over four minutes and led 27-7 at the quarter break.
“They’re a good teamm and we weren’t ready to play,” Graffam said. “That’s on me. That’s on the coaching staff. We weren’t mentally prepared to start that game, and you can’t come out not mentally prepared to play a team that good. The first three possessions in transition, they got layups, so you know right off the bat we’re not ready.”
Hampden didn’t commit a turnover in the period.
And when the Vikings successfully slammed the door to Ian McIntyre and Conar Moore under the hoop, Brendan McIntyre drained three open 3-pointers in the half. The third answered back-to-back buckets by Jake Beauchesne and Patrick Macro with 5:26 remaining, marking the last time Oxford Hills was within 20 points.
It was 42-16 at the half. Not bad for a team that couldn’t practice or play the game as scheduled Friday due to the second major snowfall of the week.
“I was curious how the kids would respond. We weren’t sure if we’d play today, because we still had really bad weather this morning,” Bartlett said. “We got good leadership from the kids we needed it from tonight, and I thought we came out with a good intensity level to start the game. That really got us kick-started.”
Andrew Fleming led the Vikings with 13 points and 11 rebounds. Tyus Ripley added 11 points.
Hampden harassed Oxford Hills into 15-for-57 (26 percent) shooting while staying above 50 percent efficiency until its starters left the game.
“I was really happy with the way we guarded Tyus and Andrew,” Bartlett said. “Obviously that was the scout and the talk, to try to slow them down, and I thought we did a really good job helping off our guys and trying to make them take tough, contested shots.”
Oxford Hills, which lost to Hampden in the 2014 regional final, wraps up the regular season with Brunswick and Mt. Blue and will enter the balanced tournament bracket somewhere between third and sixth.
“We’ll try to make it a lesson learned,” Graffam said. “We were 4-5, and if we can win those we’ll be 7-2 in the second half.”
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