Montville – The innocent climb continues Thursday night in The Ville, where the kids who play the forgotten sport try their home digs for the first time. No longer is "Montville basketball" an oxymoron. "Montville basketball" is where the undefeated guys go now, all the way to their first home game Thursday night at 800 Old Colchester Rd.

"The innocent climb," a term coined by Pat Riley, refers to the humility required to see that teamwork and all of its benefits only happen when everyone puts the team first and "conquers the territorial instinct otherwise known as The Disease of Me."

It also means this: There is a certain joy — and innocence — in the first days of a team success, where there is no room yet for external expectations to pollute the pure joy of winning after so much losing.

The innocent climb and all its tentacles are happening in Montville right now. Four wins, zero losses to start the season. They debut before the community Thursday night. Note to you Montvillians: Get your butts to the high school and affix them to the seats in the bleachers. And to the Montville students: It's time, kiddies. Your classmates are 4-0.

Because this — yes, this — is when it's fun. Winning isn't always fun. It's often no more than a relief. Maybe Geno Auriemma's best line ever: "If people think losing is hard, they should try having to deal with winning." He means that winning presents a whole new set of circumstances that belie the joy that should — but aren't always — a byproduct of winning.

"I look at it as a day to day process," new coach Tim Strong was saying last week, just after posing for the team picture commemorating the Grasso Tech Holiday Classic championship. "More film. Weight room. Extra variables. I don't see why we can't make a run at d-4 (the ECC Division IV) championship. The motivation is that when we go into our gym, you don't see a single basketball banner in there. We really want to change that. We still have a young team, but we have some seniors very driven. We're going back to school (Thursday) at 4-0 to play our first home game. People are already texting and calling me."

Or in other cases yelling at him from the bleachers. But only in a good way. Strong, who played at Norwich Tech, was an assistant at Ledyard under Dave Cornish. The Ledyard coaches, notably Cornish and Ralph Roggero, have been at all four Montville games thus far. They've done a little coaching from afar.

"They're great," Strong said. "I learned so much from them. Some of the stuff we're doing I learned at Ledyard. They've been at every single one of our games. I hope they keep coming. We're 4-0 with them."

Montville's four wins have come against Lyman Memorial, Killingly, Wheeler and Grasso Tech. Not exactly Duke, Kentucky, Carolina and Kansas. And yet this program represents the original premise of ECC expansion all the way back to 1998: Some programs are in need of scheduling relief to start winning again.

The Indians are doing just that. And when they begin to win consistently, it becomes their responsibility to increase the degree of difficulty on their schedule and leave room for other programs in need of relief — instead of manipulating the system and keeping the softies on the schedule as some schools do now.

Neither Strong nor athletic director Phil Orbe will manipulate anything. When Montville is ready, it will move to the appropriate division. Lest anyone think the Indians aren't where they should be right now, though, here are the records since 2009: 6-14, 4-16, 4-16, 5-15, 4-16, 5-15, 4-16, 5-14, 3-17, 7-13. That's 47-152.

"Last year I think Lyman beat them by 25 and Killingly beat them by 30," Strong said. "To start the season 2-0 against those guys was a confidence boost."

And much needed success for a proud athletic program in a proud sports town.

"Last time I had this much fun I was coaching middle school girls' basketball," Strong said. "No egos. They bought in. This is a good group of kids. They're just buying in to everything."

The innocent climb. Long may it last in The Ville.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro