WHITE RIVER JUNCTION – Season’s beatings from the Hartford High boys basketball team!

The Hurricanes inflicted what they hope will be the first in a string of powerful performances Friday, downing Oxbow, 70-18, on the first day of the third annual Stretch Gillam Tournament at Handley Gymnasium. The matchup of deep and experienced hosts against Callow visitors with a new head coach went as expected, with Hartford leading by 26 points after a quarter.

The Hurricanes faced White River Valley in Saturday night’s tournament championship game.

“Hartford doesn’t let up and they can sub five guys at once,” said first-year Oxbow boss Jesse Ellsworth, the Olympians’ third leader in four years. “It makes for a long day. There are reasons why they’re in the top of Division II and why we’re at the bottom of Division III.”

Hartford, 18-4 last winter, exited in the playoff quarterfinals and has expectations of going farther this season. Hurricanes guard Christian Hathorn scored 17 points, 15 of them during his first eight minutes, and Evan Lynds, Kyle Fotion and Ryan Murphy contributed 10 points each. Noah Danieli added eight points.

“We’re way ahead of where we were a year ago, when we were building a work ethic and learning to play together,” said Hartford coach Mike Gaudette, in the second year of his second stint at the program’s helm.

“We’re really deep and even our second five has Ryan and Noah who played really well on the JV level last year. We need to build our bench and this bodes well for the future.”

Gaudette felt that despite the score, his team was outworked at times and needs to improve its transition defense and rebounding. Seven Division I foes dot the schedule this season, so the Hurricanes will often be underdogs.

“When we’re trapping and running and being athletes, we’re at our best,” Gaudette said. “We get a little stagnant when we take the press off and go into the half-court offense and we have to figure out other ways to score.

“We do a lot of screens and handoffs and the kids are getting good at them. I think these kids can go a long way this season.”

Oxbow won three games last season and is hoping to post a winning campaign for the first time since 2002. Ellsworth, whose son, Kobin, is a freshman on the team, has coached many of the Olympians’ freshmen and sophomores at the middle school and AAU levels and is hoping to return the program to the strength it showed when he played for it from 1996-2000.

“You can’t get kids to buy in right away,” said Ellsworth, noting that Vermont teams have had barely more than a week of practice. “We need a change in mindset and culture. We’re trying to get these guys on board with creating a defense-first mentality.”

Griffin Pike led Oxbow with five points. Standout Brady Nickles, battling injury, didn’t start and managed only two points.

“We’re new together and we were just trying to discover which groups meshed the best,” Ellsworth said. “We’ve got 14 kids and we can play them all.”

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.