“Round one” of the Northeast 8 Conference’s boys basketball season was a battle from start to finish, and “round two” is set to be more of the same as the title chase grows more intense.
Through the first half of the NE8 slate, four of its seven teams – Poland, Hubbard, South Range and Girard – remained within a game of first place, emphasizing the league power struggle.
“The conference has great parity this year,” Hubbard head coach Ryan Fitch said. “Everyone is pretty equal, pretty even. Any given night, I really believe anybody could beat anyone.”
The Eagles’ games, in particular, have illustrated the competitive nature of the NE8. In their league opener on Dec. 12, Hubbard lost on the road to Poland 63-58. A comeback overtime win vs. South Range followed three days later, and, after dominant victories against Struthers and Niles, the Eagles pulled off three- and five-point wins over Girard and Lakeview, respectively, last week.
At 5-1 in conference play after the first round robin, Hubbard finished tied with Poland, which suffered its loss vs. Girard on Dec. 16 and, much like the Eagles, are among the most senior-laden teams in the league.
“I think if you look at a lot of the teams that are at the top of the league, especially when you look at ourselves, you look at Hubbard, they’re led by very senior, experienced groups,” Bulldogs head coach Eric Fender said. “We’ve got four seniors on our roster. All of them have been through it with us, not only in basketball, but in other fall and spring sports. Hubbard’s the same way; you got a kid like Jakob Hayes or Braydon Songer, who are multi-sport athletes who have really pushed Hubbard up to that next echelon of teams.”
The young bucks in the foursome near the top of the NE8 are Girard and South Range, both of which relied on a mixture of upper and underclassmen to emerge from the first half with 4-2 records.
The Indians, though, have had to deal with more than just inexperience since sophomore star AJ Pearson suffered an injury last month. Girard lost its final two games of the first half after a 4-0 start to league play, resulting in a slide from first place in the conference to a tie for third.
However, Pearson’s absence, while a major blow, has given reasons for first-year coach Nick Canterino to be optimistic.
“When AJ went down, a couple other guys had to step up. … Losing such a big piece, pretty much the leader of the group, some other guys had to be a little bit more vocal and get some more playing time and maybe positions they were never in before,” Canterino said. “So just seeing the resilience of them and being able to step up and still having success with that big loss was exciting to see.”
Unlike Girard, South Range rebounded from a poor start to become arguably the hottest team in the NE8.
The Raiders began the season 2-4 overall and 1-2 in the conference, with all six games being decided by eight or fewer points, including back-to-back losses to Hubbard and Poland. But just before the holiday break, South Range beat Springfield 67-51, which kickstarted a monthlong win streak in which the Raiders beat opponents, four of which in the NE8, by an average of 15 points.
“We had a slow start in the league. We had a slow start to our entire season playing a lot of young guys without a ton of varsity experience,” Raiders head coach Pat Carden said. “But we really kind of turned a switch here after Christmas break, and we seem to be playing a little bit better, getting a little bit more comfortable with the varsity game.
“Our style’s kind of changed. We’ve always been a defensive-first team, but I think that’s really kind of shown here, like I said, in those last six or seven games. Our defensive intensity has really turned up, and we know that that’s the end that we’re going to win it on. But we’ve kind of switched up some things offensively too that just seemed to fit our personnel a little bit better. The last two years that I’ve been here, we’ve had a ton of seniors, and seniors that were able to score, and now, our two leading scorers are sophomores, our next two leading scorers are juniors.”
With more than half of the league just a few bounces away from first place, the finish to the 2025-26 NE8 season is shaping up to be possibly the most contentious since 2023, when three teams shared the title and two more came within two games of first place.
Both Carden and Fender, the latter of whom was hired in 2021 and is now the league’s longest-tenured coach, attributed this year’s competitiveness to the conference’s coaches finally enjoying relative stability.
“I think some of the coaches have been in the league a little bit longer. We haven’t had as much turnover in the league this year,” Carden said. “This is only my third year, and there’s only one other coach in the league who has been here longer than me. So I think some of the familiarity … where before, you might not know what you were going to get with some of these teams. Now, you know what you’re going to get. You’re able to prepare better, you’re able to get your kids ready for it.”
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