Half way home
A report on all the CIAC action at the season’s midway point
We have reached the midway point of the 202223 boys basketball season.
The weather has been quite pleasant thus far with few postponements. What will February bring? Who knows, but we can at least take a look at what we have seen thus far: what we think have been the best conferences, the top players, the top teams and the teams that have surprised us.
The postseason will be here soon enough — it’s less than two months to the CIAC state finals at the Mohegan Sun Arena.
Top conferences
CCC: The conference held the top three spots in the GameTimeCT Top 10 poll for weeks until Windsor dropped to No. 5 this week. East Catholic and Northwest Catholic are the top teams in the state and on a collision course for a mid-February game. Bloomfield joined the other three teams in the top 10 this week after winning at Windsor. Also count Conard, Farmington, Glastonbury
and Platt among others in a very deep league. And until proven otherwise, the gap between the CCC and the others is Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes in 1973 (look it up).
SCC: Notre Dame-West Haven has been the best regular-season team in the league for a half-decade and the best overall team in the SCC for the past year and a half. Wilbur Cross has been right there with the Green Knights, winning league titles in 2019 and 2020 and has been in the top 10 all season. Its only two losses are to Northwest Catholic and Windsor. Hillhouse and Xavier are improved, Fairfield Prep and Hand are still very competitive and Guilford, Hamden and Law make the SCC much improved as a whole.
FCIAC: Very close with the SCC, very close. Danbury is the team to beat, having come from behind to beat another league unbeaten, Staples, last week. The Hatters also defeated Ridgefield in double overtime in December. The rematch is Saturday at
Western Connecticut State University. There is plenty of balance in this league, too, as seen by all of the overtime games. Wilton, Warde, Staples, Stamford and New Canaan can all be dangerous postseason teams.
SWC: You have the two heavyweights in Notre Dame-Fairfield and Kolbe Cathedral. Notre Dame took a step forward Tuesday night toward a potential three-peat by defeating Kolbe at the Shehan Center. Brookfield has had a bounce-back season