Basha 56
Brophy 37
By Jack Davis ’19
THE ROUNDUP
Matthew Kempton ’17 led Brophy in scoring with 18 points Feb. 11, but his offensive contributions were not enough as the Broncos fell to Basha 56-37.
Brophy finished the regular season with a 13-13 record and heads into the playoffs.
Kempton said that effective defense was the key to future tournament success.
“It wasn’t a bad game, we put in a good effort,” he said. “They’re a good team, I think they’re ranked No. 4 right now, but we held it close so we just have to stay positive going into the tournament.
“Every team is 0-0, so we just have to win one game at a time,” Kempton said. “I think they got ahead of us defensively. We did fine on offense, but we just need to put our defense together and work as a team better.”
Brophy could not find their offensive rhythm early, only scoring six first quarter points. Ian Burke ’18 scored three points off of a lumbering layup and one.
Burke finished with eight points.
The Broncos made up for their lack of scoring with tight defense, allowing Basha only two points more. Basha took an 8-6 lead into the second quarter.
The Bears’ offense discovered itself in the second quarter, outscoring Brophy 17-12.
Kempton led the Broncos in in the quarter with eight points, including two three-pointers. Jaxson Baker ’18 added an alley-oop layup.
Head coach Mr. Matt Hooten said that the team needed to keep up the defensive intensity to stop surrendering leads.
“We came out in the first four or five minutes with a lot of urgency, we scraped together some good defensive possessions and we got ahead a little bit in the beginning of the first quarter,” Mr. Hooten said. “As they hit a couple outside shots they were able to build a little bit of a lead, so we have to make sure we’re taking away the hot hand for the other team, not giving them easy opportunities from the outside, and on misses we have to make sure we’re not giving up second chance opportunities, we have to make sure we rebound well.”
Basha opened up the game coming out of the break. The Bears scored four more points than the Broncos and took a 39-28 lead into the final quarter.
Kempton scored all but two of the team’s 10 third quarter points.
The Broncos scored only nine points in the final quarter to Basha’s 17. At one point, Burke sank a three-pointer to cut the Bears’ lead to nine, but Basha widened their lead to 15 to secure their win.
Brophy is the 17th seed in this year’s playoffs and will play Mountain Pointe in the first round of the playoffs Feb. 18 at Mountain Pointe. Brophy played Mountain Pointe earlier in the regular season and won that game by a score of 65-62.
