BY MATT STOUT

The Bow boys basketball team knew it was coming. Up five points at the half on John Stark on Friday, Feb. 2, the Falcons emerged from the visitors’ locker room expecting a barrage of baskets from one of the top teams in Class I.

They weren’t disappointed.

But even as the Generals left their lackluster first half behind them with 19 third-quarter points en route to a 57-42 win, they couldn’t do the same to the Falcons.

Chris Gaudreau’s club matched Stark’s intensity, engineered a seven-point run of its own midway through the quarter to keep the locals within striking range to open the fourth.

At that point, the Falcons had earned a moral victory. It was the only ‘W’ they took home that night.

The collapse many of Stark’s fans may have expected from Bow in the third frame showed up a period later when foul trouble and a relentless JS defense took over. The Falcons had as many starters foul out – D.J. Poitras and Jimmy Fellows – as points in the fourth before Brian Chergey scored with 12.3 seconds to play.

Stark continually rushed Bow into poor shots throughout the final quarter. As a result, Chergey finished with 20 points after scoring 18 in the first three periods, and Poitras added nine before earning his fifth foul.

Though a win would have been an upset, the loss was frustrating. The Falcons, winners of five of six coming in, are much better than the team which opened the season with a 62-55 home loss to Stark.

But in a season that will ultimately be defined more by the steps it takes than the wins it totals, Bow is still searching for its full potential. Friday was a lesson in what it will take to get there.

“Compared to where we were a month ago, it wasn’t even close,” said Gaudreau, whose team ran into another league frontrunner in Pelham on Tuesday, Feb. 6, in a 49-43 loss. The game was a rematch of last year’s Class I title game.

“To come in here, in a hostile environment on the road, and to be in the position to win the game in the fourth quarter, that’s progress,” he continued. “It’s not what we want and we’re not accepting that. We’re not into moral victories. But it still shows progress.”

With fives games left, how far Bow comes will determine where they’ll go in the playoffs. Currently out of the home-playoff picture, the Falcons continue their season when they host first-place Plymouth on Friday, Feb. 9, and thereafter have a chance of revenge against Merrimack Valley, the only other team to beat them since early January. Monadnock visits on Feb. 16. Bow finishes on the road against winless Bishop Brady and Coe-Brown.

“I think what makes them so tough is that inside-outside combination that they have with Brian and D.J. You’re talking about two guys who can score consistently,” said John Stark coach Mike Smith, whose team has thrived due to its depth. “We don’t have the luxury of having just one guy, but you could see at the other end of the floor there tonight, if you have one or two guys that you rely on too much, it doesn’t always work out.”