‘Selfless’ Nauset Boys Basketball Plays Through Difficult Early Slate

HYANNIS – The Nauset boys basketball team is emerging from a challenging set of games to begin the season feeling great about how the slate turned out.

The Warriors — a young group that plays four sophomores in their starting five — opened 2025-26 with home wins against St. John Paul II, a Division 5 tournament team, and Dennis-Yarmouth, a Division 3 tournament team. 

Following that, they dropped competitive games at both Sandwich and Wareham (two seasons removed from winning consecutive Division 4 state championships) before picking up an overtime win at Peabody Veterans, a Division 1 tournament team.

Nauset capped the stretch Friday at Division 1 Barnstable with a 65-64 loss, a game in which the Warriors trailed by double digits into the second half but clawed back and even took a lead in the fourth quarter against a Red Hawks team with far more size.

“The group has just impressed me so much with their emotional maturity and how much they like playing with each other and how much they support each other, which is hard when you're a young team, right?” head coach Kevin Harrigan said. “Because you're so worried about yourself, and these guys are selfless, so it makes it really a joy to coach.”

Sophomore Maxwell Eldred led the scoring for the visitors against Barnstable with 23, including 11 in the fourth quarter. Sophomore Oliver Accettullo had 15, while senior Braden Decker and freshman Jared Daley each added 8. Sophomore Lucas Henri scored 7. The main trend within this early portion of the Warriors’ season has been their ability to score. They’re averaging more than 70 points per game.

And those efforts haven’t just been steered by one player. Eldred has been, consistently, an “unbelievable shooter,” Harrigan said, and he was against Barnstable. He hit a pair of 3-pointers (among six total on the day) — one of them launched from a couple steps in front of Barnstable’s midcourt logo and another heaved while twisting over two defenders — in the final minute that kept Nauset’s chances alive. 

Daley, meanwhile, scored 17 in 24 minutes against Peabody Veterans. He put in a couple of 3-pointers from the left corner in the third quarter against the Red Hawks. Accettullo will have to do battle against the biggest players on the rosters of Nauset’s opponents like he did at Barnstable, where he hauled in at least 10 rebounds.

Henri, in his first year on varsity, has been tasked as a full-time point guard and excelled on defense. The team is led by captains Decker and senior Wesley Kaser. The all-hands-on-deck approach shined as the Warriors tenaciously climbed out of a 12-point hole Friday.

“We made a promise to ourselves as coaches and kids that we don't know how the results were going to be this year, so we were going to play for the process of getting better,” Harrigan said. “So if we were up 30, we would have been playing just as hard, I hope. If we were down 30, we'd be playing just as hard, and we're going to trust that our style is going to put us in competitive situations and games because of the way the kids play.”

The straightforward goal for Nauset: 10 wins. Get a victory in at least half of their 20 games and the Warriors will be back in the Division 2 state tournament for the first time since 2023. Just past a quarter of the way through the season, they’re already about a third of the way to that mark. 

“We want a chance to get in there and see what could happen, so we're going to do our best, but 3-3 and the way that we're playing is really, really good,” Harrigan said.