Gallery by Tina Laney
Beckley and Mullens have waged some historic battles over the years.
With Mullens now consolidated into Wyoming East, the old rivalry has now been rekindled over the last two years.
After stunning the Flying Eagles last year inside the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center, Wyoming East doubled-down with a 55-41 win Thursday night.
“It means a lot to get this win. I think when we beat them last year it was the first time we had beat them here,” junior guard Cole Lambert said. “We came back up here and got another win and it feels great. We knew they were going to be ready and try to get revenge for last year. We just came ready to play and had a lot of energy.”
Elijah Redfern knocked down a jumper for Beckley one minute into the game for a 2-0 lead. Wyoming East answered with a 7-0 run and Beckley never held the lead again the rest of the night.
“Woodrow is a powerhouse and we held them to 41 points,” Wyoming East head coach Derek Brooks said. “We worked on that zone yesterday. We knew we had to throw something different at them.”
Coming off a big win over Capital, where they also faced a zone, the Flying Eagles struggled mightily all night.
“I really don’t know what it was tonight. We have to push the ball and go at people,” Beckley head coach Ron Kidd said. “We slow down because we are looking at a zone. We have kids that can shoot, but you have to go at it and move the ball. We settled too much.”
Beckley battled back to tie the score three times in the first eight minutes, but as was be the case all night, Wyoming East had an answer for ever spurt by the home team.
With the defense collapsing on Mitchell as he entered the paint, the senior standout hit Jacob Howard with a nice wrap-around pass for a bucket to open the second quarter.
Mitchell followed with a deuce and Lambert hit back-to-back buckets that gave East a 22-14 lead.
The Flying Eagles did not score until 3:25 to play before halftime and trailed 24-18 at the break.
“I thought we played extremely well. Jekyll and Hyde has kind of been our thing for the last few years unfortunately. The guys have it in them and tonight it showed,” Brooks said. “They played excellent tonight. They played excellent against Independence and at Mingo (Central). We just flubbed up against Oak Hill, but credit that to Oak Hill’s defense.”
Wyoming East built a nine-point lead midway into the third before before Beckley finally found the range with 3-pointers from Coby Dillon and Zion Hawthorne.
Bryson Huff stemmed the tide for the Warriors with a critical 3-ball, but six straight from Beckley tied the game as the third quarter clock ticked under a minute.
A floater from Lambert in the waning seconds and a triple from Mitchell to open the final quarter gave East some breathing room and a 38-33 lead.
“Garrett started us early and he was efficient throughout. Cole was efficient throughout,” Brooks said. “That is the kind of games we have to have from those two going forward. They played excellent tonight and our defense was very, very good.”
Forcing Beckley to chase all over the floor, fouls started to mount and East was rock solid at the foul line down the stretch.
“We have been working on being patient. We tend to force a lot of shots unnecessarily. It’s like they think there is a shot clock and they don’t have one,” Brooks said. “If we don’t get a good shot, Cole will go get and we can run something else. I thought we did a better job of that tonight. I thought we took a couple of bad shots, but we have to live with that. Overall I am proud of them.”
The visitors from New Richmond converted 13-of-16 tries from the charity stripe to put Beckley away.
“They made us work (on defense) and that is where it shows whether you are tough or not,” Kidd said. “When teams make you play defense like (Wyoming East) did tonight, it showed were weren’t very tough at times.”
Offensively, the Beckley coach was left frustrated with his team’s inability to get effective touches in the paint.
“I don’t think they had an answer for Walton when we got it inside, but he has to go strong to the basket to score,” Kidd said. “Braydon (Hawthorne) has to turn and face so he can just shoot over people. He was trying to have his back to the goal. He doesn’t need to do that. Just turn and shoot over people.”
Mitchell led all scorers with 21 and Lambert had 20, but Wyoming East was more than a two-man show Thursday.
“We have to have people playing their role and I thought they did that tonight. Bryson took open shots when they gave it to him. Jackson manned the paint and rebounded well for us,” Brooks said. “We also had people come off the bench, like Dacoda Cooper, and give us solid minutes handling the pressure when Jackson was in foul trouble.”
After dropping contests to Class AAAA Princeton and Oak Hill, Brooks was clearly happy with his team after the win.
“They played hard and they took it to Beckley,” Brooks said. “That is how we have been in practice. We have showed spurts of it, but tonight we put it together for 32 minutes.”
WE: 14 10 11 20 – 55
B: 14 4 15 8 – 41
Wyoming East
Garrett Mitchell 21, Cole Lambert 20, Bryson Huff 10, Jacob Howard 4. Totals: 16 19-22 55.
Beckley
Coby Dillon 9, Elijah Redfern 11, Zion Hawthorne 3, Braydon Hawthorne 4, Kellan Heffernan 2, Jaylon Walton 12. Totals: 11 8-9 41.
3-pointers – WE 4 (Mitchell 2, Huff 2); B: 5 (Dillon 3, Redfern, Z. Hawthorne).
