WILMINGTON — Scoring nine of the first 11 points of the fourth quarter, Western Brown pulled away from Wilmington for a 68-55 SBAAC American Division victory Tuesday at Fred Summers Court.
Western Brown (4-3, 2-0) led 50-47 entering the final period, turned that into a 59-49 cushion and then salted away the game at the free throw line.
Bronco Drew Novak led all scorers with 19 points. Teammates Abe Crall (17) and Matt Frye (14) joined him in double figures.
Crall’s three with a minute left in the first half gave the Broncos their first lead of the evening, 26-23. Frye launched one steps inside the half court stripe that dropped at the halftime horn to put Western Brown up 29-25. They would never trail again.
Wilmington (6-3, 1-2) started out hot, doubling up Western Brown 18-9 after a period. Cole Bernhardt had 10 in the first on his way to 14 points. Luke Blessing chipped in with six of his 11 points in the quarter. They combined to score the last six points of the first quarter.
Western Brown started the second quarter with a 10-2 run to pull within 20-19 of Wilmington, eventually catching the Hurricane on Crall’s three.
“In the first quarter, our guys did a good job of executing the game plan. We knew exactly what they wanted to do on the offensive end. We felt like we were doing a really good job defensively. We played with some good energy on the offensive end,” WHS head coach Jermaine Isaac said. “And then in the second quarter, they went to that 1-3-1 zone, which we were prepared for, but I should have prepared our guys more for that. We just started to turn the ball over against that zone. We knew their length would give us some issues. And we ran out of gas. We’re not extremely deep; and we have two guys out in our rotation.”
Collin Barker led the Hurricane with 18 points, 13 of them in the second half.
Wilmington returns to action Friday, Jan. 7, with another American Division tilt at Goshen.
SUMMARY
January 4, 2022
@Fred Summers Court
Western Brown 68 Wilmington 55
WB^9^20^21^18^^68
WIL^18^7^22^8^^55
(68) WESTERN BROWN (fg-ft-tp) Entzminger-Chisenhall 2-3-7, Miller 0-4-4, Frye 4-4-14, A. Crall 7-0-17, Drew Novak 9-0-19, Campbell 2-3-7, S. Smith 0-0-0, Loudon 0-0-0. Total 24-14-68. 3-point goals: 6 (Crall 3, Frye 2, Novak) FTM-FTA 13-20, 65 percent.
(55) WILMINGTON (fg-ft-tp) Blessing 5-0-11, Brown 2-0-4, Baltazar 1-0-2, Bernhardt 6-2-14, Barker 7-0-18, Warix 1-0-3, Griffith 1-1-3. Total 23-3-55. 3-point goals: 6 (Barker 4, Blessing, Warix). FTM-FTA 3-5, 60 percent.
