Dynasty mode: Gilford boys win third (or fourth) championship

GILFORD — Rick Acquilano likes to tell his players to focus on the little things, and they’ll add up to something big. That something big turned into an undefeated season capped with a state championship, the third Division III title in three years for the Golden Eagles boys basketball team.

Gilford beat Mascoma Valley on Saturday night at Keene State College. The final score was 69-43.

The story for the latest Gilford boys championship goes back four years, to the 2019-20 season. Gilford was on a tear that year, made it all the way to the title game, and almost got to play in it, too. But as the playoff bracket was developing that year, so too was a global pandemic. Hours before the final game of the season, in which Gilford was to face Mascenic, the NHIAA called off the game. Eventually, both teams were awarded the status of co-champions, but Acquilano said it left their hunger unsatisfied.

“We didn’t get the chance to play the thing that we worked all season for,” he said.

That was just the start of a dominant run for the Golden Eagles. The team, led by point guard Jalen Reese — playing his first year on that ‘19-20 roster — won the championship in 2021 and in 2022, making the team the hands-down favorite before the 2022-23 season even started.

Acquilano’s team fulfilled those expectations with an undefeated season, though he said it was never as easy as it looked from the outside.

“People have gotten spoiled by the dominating wins, they don’t understand the grind, the constant target on your back,” Acquilano said. The way he pushed through the pressure of those expectations was by breaking down the big picture — winning another championship — into granular pieces.

“We work hard on the little things. If you do enough of the little things right, they add up to big things,” Acquilano said. Practices focused on proper stance, quick hands, on-court communication, where the other players should position themselves when a teammate is dribbling through a zone defense.

All of that, and defense. When others said Gilford has “winning DNA,” Acquilano focused his players on sharpening their “winning D[efense].”

Their record tells the tale of a brutalizing defense. A dozen of their wins were by more than 20 points, only three opponents came within 10 points and five wins were by a margin of more than 40 points.

Yet it was no cakewalk to get to the final game. The greatest test, it turned out, came in the first playoff game for Gilford, who entered the playoffs with the top seed.

“Sometimes, those early games are the ones you have to find your way through,” Acquilano said. Their first draw, in the quarterfinal round, was against the eighth-seeded Conant, a team that Gilford faced twice in the regular season — and one of the teams that found a way to challenge the Golden Eagles. “We respected them,” Acquilano said.

The first half of the game was looking like it might go the way everyone expected it to, with Gilford leading by 18 at the break. But there was reason for Acquilano to worry: Reese, who leads the team in just about every statistic, had gotten himself into foul trouble and would have to sit for most of the second half. That gave Conant an opening, and they found it. The game was tied as the clock wound down, until Reese, sent back into the game, drained a jumper from the top of the key to send Gilford on to the semifinal round.

Gilford dispatched fourth-seeded Hopkinton in the semis, 62-42, and third-seeded Mascoma Valley in the final, 69-43.

The team’s run was led by Reese, the kind of player so rare that Acquilano called him a “unicorn.”

“My starting point guard is 6’6”, and his playoff record is 11-0 going into the championship, do you think that’s an advantage?” Acquilano also pointed to the leadership of center Sam Cheek, who played the role of “traffic cop” on defense, making sure everyone knew their assignment on each possession. Isaiah Reese, Jalen’s younger brother, also grew into a leadership position.

“He’s got a toughness to him, a confidence,” Acquilano said of the younger Reese, who will return to the team as a senior next year. “He certainly sets the tone for us on the defensive end.”

Gilford was “blessed with three guys in particular who had been there before,” Acquilano said, but added that in many games, it was standout performances by some of the supporting cast that put them over the top.

Henry Sleeper hit three 3-pointers in the quarterfinal, contributing nine crucial points in a game that was decided by a single bucket. Acquilano said, “I’m sure the Conant coach was saying, ‘Who’s Henry Sleeper?’”

In the semifinal, Brendan Baldi, a sophomore, drained four 3-pointers. “That’s what broke Hopkinton’s back in the end.”

And in the final game, Logan Grant scored four times from beyond the arc, and finished the game with 16 points.

“The growing balance in our team, the growing depth in our team, with those guys doing it game in and game out, we got better around them as the season progressed, and in the end, that’s what I thought propelled us to the championship,” Acquilano said.

Next year, Jalen Reese will be at Hamilton College in New York, and Acquilano will be looking for the next generation of leadership.

“I anticipate Jalen will be the player of the year. It will be hard to replace the player of the year,” Acquilano said. But there’s a strong group of players on the junior varsity team, and they’ll have their chance to contribute to the Gilford tradition: Focusing on the small things, and in doing so, accomplishing something big.

“Finishing undefeated, finishing that way, was pretty good stuff,” Acquilano said.