SUTTON, W.Va. — Braxton County entered Friday’s home game with Gilmer County on a three-game losing streak.
Well aware his team hadn’t shown the ability to consistently execute against zone defense over that stretch, Eagles’ head coach Josh Lunceford elected to have his team put a heavy emphasis on doing exactly that throughout this week in practice.
The results were far more favorable against the Titans, with the Eagles scoring at last 20 points in each of the first three quarters and shooting 50 percent in a 76-56 victory.
“We’ve been working a bunch against zone,” Lunceford said. “We’ve struggled with it the last two or three games. We literally practice against it every day, and then we get in a game recently and it’s like we’ve never seen anybody play zone. We changed a couple things up over the last three or four days in practice. We’re doing a few things different, kind of playing more toward our strengths as a team.”
BCHS (15-6) never trailed and opened the game with six straight points, though the Titans (6-14) were even shortly after courtesy of a Tyler Ratliff three-pointer and another from Jacob Mick.
After Zack McQuain and Owen Lowther each countered with a three, the Eagles were on top to stay, and they got eight first-quarter points from James Nettles to lead by 11 before Kolton Holbert’s conventional three-point play brought GCHS to within 20-12 after one.
Eagles’ reserve Ashton Stewart started the second-quarter scoring with back-to-back triples, and when Lowther connected from longe range for Braxton’s next trey, the Titans faced a 31-16 deficit.
“We like to spread the floor and use our athleticism,” Lunceford said. ”That’s our thing and what we’ve done most of the year. As a coach, you’re supposed to take away what a team does well. That’s what your goal should be. I’ve said all year long, I couldn’t believe teams weren’t zoning us, and that’s all we’ve seen the last bit here. Word spreads quick. I was almost guaranteeing they’d come out in a zone and we brought them out of it. That’s what we want to accomplish where we’re just as effective against a zone as we are against man-to-man.”
Gilmer trailed 35-21 when Mick made a jumper, but the Eagles got six straight points from Austin Smart and a paint bucket from Nettles to hold a commanding 43-21 halftime advantage.
Through two quarters, Braxton was shooting 18 for 33, while mixing in quality half court execution with transition offense and a dominant rebounding advantage that created an abundance of second chances. The Eagles’ had 19 first-half rebounds to nine for the Titans and a 33-18 edge on the boards for the game.
“If we wanted to be successful in this game, we had to hold them to one shot,” Gilmer head coach Austin Ratliff said. “It’s hard to do that when they have 6-8, 6-4 and 6-3 down there, but at the end of the day it comes down to fundamental basketball and you have to box out when the shot goes up. We did a poor job of that tonight. BC is a very good team and they shot the ball extremely well. The good thing about tonight is it doesn’t hurt our regional seeding. This is a game we can learn from.”
Braxton led 65-37 after three quarters, before Titans’ freshman Jeren Hutchins scored eight fourth-quarter points to help his team win that period, 19-11.
“We started to hit the open cutters and we started cutting better to the basket,” coach Ratliff said.
The Eagles made 30-of-60 shots and had four double-figure scorers. McQuain led Braxton with 16 points and Nettles scored 14 to go with a game-high nine rebounds. Lowther contributed 12 points and Stewart added 11.
Braxton’s Stevie Boggs, a 6-foot-7 senior, did not play in the second half.
“Stevie has a stress fracture in his foot,” Lunceford said. “We go in up 22 at halftime and I told him in the locker room, ‘I’m not going to play you the rest of this one.’ I told the guys go out there and take care of business. He’s a linchpin for us.”
Holbert’s 17 points led all players and Mick scored 11. The Titans shot a plenty respectable 47.7 percent (21 for 44), but turned it over 17 times.