Brushfork – There doesn’t appear to be much that can derail the Wyoming East train.
On their third head coach of the season, the Warriors have hit their stride under the Kent McBride regime.
After picking up wins over ranked foes Westside and Logan to open his tenure, McBride’s East squad entered the daunting confines of the Brushfork Armory and withstood a late run Friday night to earn a 66-55 win over regional foe Bluefield.
Shooting a 49 percent from the field (24 of 49), including 60 percent (21 of 35) from inside the arc, the No. 3-ranked Warriors placed four in doubles figures, each taking turns shining against the Beavers.
“Part of it was because how they were playing,” McBride said. “They were trying to scramble a little bit and gave us – we were able at times to take advantage of their being a little more hectic on defense. That’s something we’ve struggled with the last two games at certain points and I think we’re getting better at it. But I thought we handled it much better tonight than we’ve handled it in the end of the Logan game and at the end of the Westside game.
For Bluefield it was more of the same – an encouraging performance that doesn’t register in the win column, dropping the Beavers to 0-7 on the season.
“We play a schedule that’s gonna get us ready, and we want that win. I’m looking for my first win as a head coach,” Bluefield head coach Tony Webster said. “You look at our schedule and this is a team that we want and we need to be competitive against in the regional. (East) is one of our regional opponents, we did everything we thought we needed to do except win on the scoreboard. We turned them over like I thought we needed to do. We just gotta keep on grinding and figure out the pieces to the pie.”
Webster’s assessment wasn’t off base.
His team stole eight passes and won the turnover battle 14-11 but lost 32-22 on the boards and countered East’s efficient night from the floor with just a 39 percent showing (21 of 54).
Despite those disparities the Beavers were never truly out of the game.
They forced the Warriors into a boat race early, trailing 18-17 after a quarter, taking the lead early in the second following buckets from Greyson Parris and Amari Helm. East freshman Broc Johnson, who finished with a game-high 20 points, reeled off four straight to knot the game at 22 with fellow freshman Talan Muscari tipping the scales back East’s way with a 3.
From there 6-foot-7 center Konnor Fox took over for East, scoring 10 of the next 12 points for his team, helping them to a 37-30 lead at the intermission.
The momentum carried early into the third quarter where the Warriors threatened to run away up 42-33 but 3s from Davion Hickman and Jack Hurt slashed the deficit back to five at 46-41 and eventually 46-43 after a pair of Amari Helm free throws.
On cue, the Warriors delivered a counter punch, ripping a 10-0 run that spanned the third and fourth quarter for their largest lead of the game at 13. But the Beavers remained vigilant, getting five points from Hickman during an 11-2 charge that brought them to within four points with just over two minutes to go.
It proved to be the last gasp for the hosts, though, as they missed their last seven field goal attempts of the night while East made 8 of 11 free throw attempts during that span.
That final stretch put Muscari in double figures with 12 points where he joined Johnson (20), Fox (18) and Braxton Morgan (11).
“If you look at our three games that I’ve been here, that’s what it’s been,” McBride said. “We’ve had, I mean, I think we haven’t had anybody over 15 in our games because it’s like 15, 13 and nine. It’s a testament to these guys that they share the basketball and the thing that I think we make difficult on other teams is that when you go to scout us, who are you taking away first? I don’t know where to start and it makes my job easy.”
Bluefield meanwhile was never able to get leading scorer Jase Smith going as he was limited to 10 points on 4 of 14 shooting.
“What we said is we were trying to keep him under 20,” McBride laughed in relief. “We were like, ‘Hey, if we can keep under 20, I think getting to 55 might be a little tough.’ We did a good job and we started with Talan, a freshman, and we rotated in a freshmen, so they did a really good job on him and Jase Smith can freaking play! The thing we talked about, he will take tough shots and he will make tough shots and you just can’t get discouraged. I thought we get a good job just making him take – we took anything away at the rim. We said, ‘You gotta be a jump shooter and it needs to be over a hand and if you’re gonna shoot us out of the gym, we’ll pack our stuff and we’ll go home.’ We did it a pretty good job of that tonight.”
WE: 18 19 15 13 – 65
B: 17 13 13 12 – 55
Wyoming East
Talan Muscari 12, Broc Johnson 20, Braxton Morgan 11, Konnor Fox 18, Corey Hall 2, Brayden Hoosier 3
Bluefield
Davion Hickman 10, Amari Helms 7, Jeff King 3, Jack Hurt 8, Ricky Dunford 5, Jase Smith 10, Greyson Parris 12
