The Cooperstown boys basketball program has produced some great teams over the years, teams that have won sectional titles, made it to the State Final Four and won a State Championship in the case of the 2018-19 squad.
But the 2024-25 edition has a shot at something none of those teams ever achieved: perfection.
A victory by forfeit earlier this week capped a perfect 20-0 regular season for the Hawkeyes, who are ranked number two in the state in Class C by the New York State Sportswriters Association (NYSSWA).
As they prepare for next week’s Section III playoffs, head coach John Lambert views the success of this season as having been years in the making.
“This team has been working really hard over the last three years to get to this spot,” Lambert said.
It hasn’t been an easy road for Cooperstown in recent years.
That state championship season was Lambert’s first as the varsity head coach and was followed up by a sectional final appearance in 2020.
But after the COVID-shortened 2020-21 campaign, the Hawkeyes won just three games in 2021-22 and eight in 2022-23. Last year’s team got back over .500 with an 11-10 mark but was bounced from the sectional playoffs in the first round.
The silver lining of those lean years was that younger players were given valuable playing time that is paying dividends now. The Hawkeyes are a young team, with captain Cooper Bradley the only senior in the regular rotation. But they have experience that belies their age, experience that goes back to their earliest years on the court together.
“These kids love to play,” Lambert said. “They play all the time, they play year round, they put the work in in the weight room, working on their skills. We get together as often as we can. This year has been a culmination of that work coupled with them becoming physically stronger and bigger and continuing to trust what we’re doing and buying into how we like to play as a team and what we like to do.”
What Cooperstown likes to do is score points. A lot of points.
The numbers are eye-popping. The Hawkeyes enter the playoffs averaging 78 points per game, have scored 70 or more points 14 times, 80 or more nine times and 90 or more four times.
And they aren’t winning back-and-forth contests either. Their average margin of victory is more than 30 points per game. All but two of their wins have come by double-digits and all but three have been by 20 or more points.
The Hawkeyes have also been lethal from three-point range all season long with a whopping 177 threes as a team, more than nine per game.
Lambert said the team’s offensive approach is a result of the strengths of the individual players rather than any coaching philosophy.
“I think as a coach you have to adapt to what you have,” he said.
For him and his players, that means getting out and running, playing high-pressure, man-to-man defense and sharing the ball.
“I have a simple rule: if you’re open and you can make that shot, you have to shoot it,” Lambert said.
What’s made it so difficult for opposing defenses to stop Cooperstown is the fact that if they decide to focus on stopping one player, the Hawkeyes have several others who are ready and able to step up.
“It’s more of a dynamic where they know their strengths, they know their roles, they know their weaknesses,” Lambert said. “I’m not sure anybody’s going into any given game thinking, ‘Oh, I’m dropping 30 tonight.’ They know if the opportunity’s there, they’re going to be able to take advantage of it and the way an opportunity presents itself is if you’re working as a team.”
Junior Miles Nelen has been the team’s top scorer, averaging just under 22 points per game with the highlight being a 40-point performance in an early-season win over Waterville. Lambert pointed to his return after an injury-marred sophomore campaign as a key to this year’s success.
Another big addition has been junior Christian Lawson. A transfer from Milford, Lawson has brought a dynamic element to the Hawkeyes with his contributions on offense and defense.
Elsewhere, Bradley has provided leadership and a physical presence in the paint while juniors Jackson Crisman and Cooper Coleman and sophomore Brody Murdock have all stepped up when called upon throughout the season.
As the Hawkeyes have continued to stack up wins, the expectations have grown both inside and outside the locker room. But Lambert isn’t one to shy away from eyeing lofty heights.
“When we come into a season we always have goals,” he said. “Obviously the goal is to win the whole thing. I don’t have any problem talking about that. If we don’t make it, we try to get better the next year.”
He said the team sets specific goals for itself throughout the year, such as winning its Dick White Holiday Tournament, the Center State Conference division title, the Section III Championship and in the end, the state title.
The Hawkeyes have already accomplished the first two of those goals. The next few weeks will determine just how far this impressive group can go. Whatever the end result, they will no doubt face the challenge with the winning mindset that has gotten them this far.
“We have different goals we’re trying to accomplish as we go and I think it allows the kids to get a sense of satisfaction in accomplishing that goal as they go as opposed to starting off the season saying, ‘We’re going to win the state championship,’” Lambert said. “We don’t shy away from any of that every year and obviously you can’t win it every year so you have to learn from that and grow from that if you don’t win it. But I think to approach it any other way would be a disservice to the kids because I know what they want to do. They want to win.”