Monday night featured a clash between two of the best boys basketball players in Maine’s North region, with Mount Desert Island guard James Witham and Brewer forward Oli Higgins squaring off on the court.
It was Witham and his Trojan teammates who got the better of the matchup, with MDI winning 68-41 behind Witham’s 26 points and 17 more from teammate Dylan Stoll.
Higgins led the way for Brewer with 15 points, but the Witches could not keep pace with the high-powered MDI attack or the Trojans’ swarming defense.
“I was really proud of our kids,” MDI coach Justin Norwood said after the game. “We’ve been talking a lot about some different things on both ends of the floor that we needed to be a little bit more connected, and I really felt like tonight we started to do those things.”
Norwood praised Higgins’ ability and highlighted the group defensive effort that the Trojans used to try to slow him down.
“He’s pretty good,” Norwood said about the Brewer sophomore. “He’s really good.”
MDI focused on trying to defend as a unit with all five of its players on the floor.
“It’s not one guy who’s going to be able to stop someone like that,” Norwood said. “We defended as a group, I thought.”
Even with that group effort, it was hard not to notice the individual contributions from Witham on both ends of the floor. The junior star added a host of steals that helped jumpstart his team’s transition offense.
“We do a lot of conditioning on the team, we make sure we’re in shape so we can press all day. It felt really good,” Witham said. “We all did really well pressing up. I know a lot of my teammates got a lot of steals too. I think collectively as a unit we were just on the same page.”
A key stretch for the MDI unit came from Preston Tripp late in the first quarter and into the second. Tripp made several baskets, including a big three-pointer, to help MDI stretch the lead after a tight start to the game.
“I think we played really well. I think we were in the lanes, we rebounded well,” Witham said after the convincing win. “They’ve got Oli, and he’s a big dude. I think we did really good boxing him out as a team, getting rebounds.”
MDI moved to 8-1 and is in third place in Class B North after the victory. Brewer is now 2-6 and in eighth place in Class A North.