Gallery by Tina Laney
Princeton head coach Robb Williams fully believed his team couldn’t shoot worse than 2 for 9 showing it had from downtown in the first half of Wednesday’s game against Class AA Wyoming East.
He was wrong.
The Tigers missed all 11 of their 3-point attempts in the second half of their New River CTC Invitational matchup with the Warriors, going cold in the fourth quarter of a 45-39 loss in the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center.
Despite their inefficient shooting from beyond the arc, the Tigers were in a good spot ahead 35-29 early in the fourth. And then it crumbled in their paws with East outscoring them 16-4 the rest of the way.
“We’ve struggled offensively pretty much all year besides a few games,” East head coach Derek Brooks said. “I don’t know if it’s the youth or the confidence level but I mean we struggled kind of all year but I think Braxton Morgan picked it up there in the fourth quarter. He started doing what he does and what we’ve been trying to get him to get back to. He’s an offensive-rebound guy. He’s one that goes up high-points the ball. He gets put backs and I thought he did a good job of that there in the fourth and we got stops. I think we gave up what, four points in the last five minutes or something like that? So I have to credit our defense and team defense since we play zone to box out a little better, but we got the clutch buckets when we had to have them.”
The late stretch was the most successful offensively for either team with East’s 18 points in the frame topping the output of any quarter and tying the amount scored by either team in the first half (East led 18-16 at the break).
Princeton took control of the game in the third, scoring 16 points in the frame to provide some offensive traction.
After East’s Bryson Huff expanded the Warriors lead to 20-16 out of the break Gavin Brown and Koen Sartin combined to help the Tigers tie the game at 22. Buckets from Nik Fleming and Britt Beasley pushed the advantage to 26-22 with Zayden Neeley later adding a pair of jumpers that expanded the lead at 30-25.
Neeley’s final field goal of the game came early in the fourth, giving Princeton that 35-29 advantage.
Then East started to pick apart the Tiger defense.
Braxton Morgan started the rally with a 3 off an assist from Bryson Huff and added to it with a pair of layups that put the Warriors up 36-35.
Marquel Lowe snapped the run with Princeton’s penultimate field goal of the game but Zach Hunt reestablished control for the Warriors with a 3 from the corner. East never relinquished it the rest of the way, riding Morgan who scored all 13 of his points in the final frame.
“We shot 2 for 20 from 3-point land,” Williams said. “We stopped moving the ball, you know, and we specifically worked on offense the last few practices – just moving the ball right through set plays that we had and we have plenty of them. But if you don’t execute those plays, we can make the plays, we can draw up plays, we can practice the plays and we can teach the plays but you know when you shoot 2 for 20 and 35 percent for the game it’s tough. Not knocking East I mean, because obviously we scored 39 points or whatever but their defense wasn’t anything stellar. They didn’t score much either and they played good defense, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t something that really made us that uncomfortable. We had open looks. We just didn’t make them and we had players missing wide open layups, breakaway layups. We had good passes underneath and we’re missing layups. This is high school basketball.”
For the game East converted on 45 percent of its field goal attempts, including 17 of 30 from inside the arc. Princeton was 15 of 28 inside the arc but 10 of its 20 missed 3-point attempts came in the final quarter alone.
“They’re not a really a shooting team,” Brooks said. “Usually the lineup they have can shoot but the starting lineup they had tonight was a bit different. They have several kids who can shoot but I don’t think they shoot it at a high clip and that’s what I told our guys before. Just close out. Don’t stay on your feet, play the drive and just contest shots. And we didn’t do that early and they got to the rim. They got some easy dump offs off of help and we were jumping. I thought there in the fourth quarter they finally did what I asked them just contested shots and played the drive and made them settle for outside jumpers and fortunately they didn’t fall.”
Cole Lambert led East with 14 points in the win while Morgan added 13. Koen Sartin led Princeton with 12 points in the loss.