BULLETS STUN ENOSBURG IN OVERTIME PLAYDOWN WIN
By Ben Kaufmann
ENOSBURG – Three days removed from a shellacking in the same gym in which BFA-Fairfax trailed Enosburg 50-16 after three quarters, the No. 11 Bullets returned for a first-round playoff matchup on Tuesday and took down the No. 6 Hornets in overtime, 50-48.
“Playoffs, man. Everybody starts 0-0, right?” said Fairfax coach Dave Demar, who had watched his team lose to Enosburg twice by double-digits in the regular season.
“Super proud of those guys. I don’t know, I can’t really put it into words what these guys did today. We beat a very good team, Enosburg is a very good team.”
Fairfax (9-12), which advances to Saturday’s Division III quarterfinal against the winner of No. 3 Williamstown and No. 14 Leland & Gray, accomplished Tuesday’s upset without a single player scoring more than a dozen points. Evan Fletcher led the underdogs with 12 points, Luca Chayer ran the point masterfully and scored nine (including 4/4 from the line in overtime), Jackson Wimette finished with eight, Riley Greene scored seven and Reed and Lane Stygles added six apiece. Bryce Fontaine rounded out the BFA scoring, chipping in his only two points in overtime.
“We could easily have folded up but they came to play tonight,” Demar said. “We had a good game plan going in, obviously scouted them and played them twice this season, and the kids really sucked it up and executed perfectly.”
Outside of two early runs – Fairfax took a 10-2 lead into the second quarter and Enosburg had it knotted at 13-13 by the final two minutes of the first half – the contest was tight right to the final buzzer. A very brief seven-point lead for BFA in the third was the largest for either team after the opening seconds of the second quarter.
After its slow start, Enosburg (11-8) was a little fortunate to get back as well as they did. Shea Howrigan’s heroics included five threes en route to a game-high 18 points. Two of those threes came in overtime and two more came in the third to help the Hornets take a 34-31 lead into the fourth.
Enosburg’s biggest success came in the middle quarters and came just as much from its forwards as from Howrigan’s threes. Silas Kane scored all eight of his points in those middle quarters and Gavin Combs scored six of his eight in that span; each was dominant on the boards for that spell. Unfortunately for the hosts, Enosburg spent too much of Tuesday trying to score without using its big men.
“They came out and did what we thought they were going to do and we just settled for, I would guess that we shot somewhere around 30 three pointers,” said EFHS coach Chad Lovelette. “We just settled for threes all night long. We’d make a run and think ‘Oh, we’re doing it’ and defensively we were just out to lunch today too, just getting caught on stuff that we’d been working on.”
Fairfax got off to its hot start thanks to a pair of opening baskets from Greene. Fletcher, Chayer and Reed Stygles each added baskets in the first but Enosburg opened the second with a Howrigan three on its first possession, then Combs grabbed three straight offensive rebounds and finally scored on the last one. Greene picked up his third foul trying to block a breakaway then immediately earned a technical for his fourth with more than four minutes left in the second quarter.
Enosburg looked to have Fairfax on the ropes at that point, using a 12-3 run to take a four-point lead before Chayer hit a corner three and Fletcher made both ends of a one-and-one to help BFA to an 18-17 halftime lead.
Fairfax kicked off the third with a Fletcher and-one play and Reed Stygles basket to extend its lead to six before Combs put back an offensive rebound. Fletcher made a pair of free throws to get the Bullet lead back to six before Enosburg kicked off a run of its own. Devyn Gleason, who had been held to two points in the first half, took a steal coast-to-coast before Lane Stygles countered with an and-one play to give BFA a 28-21 lead. Howrigan hit a three then picked up a steal, leading to the first of two straight Kane baskets to even things up at 28-28. Greene returned to the floor and immediately hit a three, Gleason matched with his own from beyond the arc then Howrigan drew a charge for Greene’s fifth foul and made a three at the buzzer to send the Hornets into the fourth up 34-31.
Wyatt Boyce pushed Enosburg’s lead to 36-31 to open the fourth before Wimette took a steal coast-to-coast, completing an and-one play to cut BFA’s deficit to two midway through the fourth. Fletcher hit a three to make it a one-point BFA lead with just under three minutes to go but Gleason returned the advantage to Enosburg with another three. Howrigan added the front end of a one-and-one with 90 seconds left to make Enosburg’s lead 40-37. With just under a minute to go, Reed Stygles grabbed an offensive rebound, setting up his brother Lane for a game-tying three with 53 seconds left. Enosburg held for the last shot and missed a long three at the buzzer.
Fontaine hit a nice spinning layup in traffic to get BFA started in overtime, then Reed Stygles caught a blocked shot and put it in and Chayer hit both ends of a one-and-one; just like that, Fairfax led 46-40 with just 1:18 left in overtime. Howrigan kept the Hornets alive with a deep three before Chayer again hit both ends of a one-and-one. After Enosburg missed, Howrigan picked up a steal and tossed it to Gleason for an easy layup to cut BFA’s lead to 48-45 with 22 seconds left. Wimette drew a foul and hit both shots, rendering one more Howrigan three too little, too late. Enosburg did get the ball back once more but stepped out of bounds before getting a chance to shoot.
“Credit to them, they played hard,” Lovelette said of the Bullets. “They came here to give it all they had and it was good enough tonight, for sure.”
Gleason finished with a dozen points for the Hornets, who end up just short of a third straight trip to the final-four in Barre. Tuesday concludes the basketball careers of an impressive group of Hornet seniors who have seen tremendous success despite dealing with a pandemic for most of their careers. Howrigan, Combs, Boyce, Nathaniel Robtoy, Blair Archambault, Ethan Hogaboom and Landon Blake will graduate this spring after a couple of incredible playoff runs (and, for some, a soccer championship last fall). The dream remains alive for the Bullets, who await the winner of Wednesday’s playdown game and will either travel to Williamstown or host Leland & Gray. Fairfax hasn’t been to Barre for a final-four since 2018 and last played for a championship in a memorable 2009 postseason. Fairfax has never won a boys basketball title and the school hasn’t won one at all since 1981.
Jackson Wimette draws a foul on a layup late in BFA-Fairfax’s upset win at Enosburg in Tuesday’s Division III playdown (Ben Kaufmann, County Courier) 
Enosburg’s Silas Kane pulls down a rebound in Tuesday’s loss to BFA-Fairfax (Ben Kaufmann, County Courier) 
The BFA-Fairfax bench celebrates as the final seconds run down at the end of Tuesday’s overtime win over Enosburg in the Division III playoffs (Ben Kaufmann, County Courier)
