Take a Friday snow day, and add a 1 p.m. start, and you’d think there was a possibility players in a high school basketball game could be sluggish.
Wilby and Kennedy were anything but in the opening quarter of their NVL Brass Division clash Saturday at the Reggie O’Brien Gymnasium of Wilby High School.
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| Kennedy’s Darryl Flowers just gets the ball over a Wilby double team. |
A frenetic opening eight minutes ended with Wilby leading 25-22. The Wildcats love to play fast, and much more of Saturday’s game was at their pace. Wilby took control early in the fourth quarter and ran to a nice 82-70 win.
The Wildcats got a monster effort from 6-foot-3 senior forward Damian Grant. Grant poured in a game-high 33 points, with most of the grunt work coming under or close to the basket. Grant only had one field goal in the fourth quarter, but he made 5-of-6 from the foul line to help Wilby seal the game. The Wildcats were 18-of-25 on free throws for 72 percent. Their counterparts from Kennedy had a rough outing, going 8-of-18 from the charity stripe (@44.4 percent).
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| Wilby’s Damian Grant (25) lays the ball up. |
Grant wasn’t the only player with a big afternoon for the host Wildcats. Senior guard Darrien Bell contributed 10 points, along with a ton of energy and hustle. A pick got Bell open inside for a lay-up and a 57-52 Wilby lead on the first play of the quarter. Bell later gave his team their biggest lead of the game to that point, 64-55, with a great spin inside and a floater. After a Kennedy 3 pulled the visitors to within 64-58, Bell blew by his defender on the left wing and drove in for a lay-up to up the lead back to eight.
Wilby was up just four, 66-62 with 4:17 left, then Grant came up big. After a Wildcat steal, Grant was all alone and slammed it home with his left hand to make the score 69-62. On the next possession, a Grant offensive rebound and putback made it 71-62. The Eagles never got closer than six the rest of the way.
Sophomore guard Christian Harris (17 points) hit some key shots for Wilby, junior guard Nasir Smith made 5-of-7 free throws in the fourth quarter, and senior guard Dimitri Yates did some good things as well. 6-foot-10 senior Shawn Coles didn’t provide much offense (2 points), but he used his height and long arms to bother some Eagle shots on drives to the hoop.
Senior Darryl Flowers led three Kennedy players in double figures with 20 points. Senior Jaivaun McKnight tallied 19 points, including a trio of 3-pointers, while junior Tyvon Stenson added 13 points. Victor Sampson added nine points for the Eagles.
Both teams are now 11-4 overall and 10-3 in the NVL. The Wildcats improve to 2-4 in the Brass Division while the Eagles drop to 2-3.
This week, Wilby plays at Naugatuck Wednesday and at Sacred Heart Friday. Kennedy is home against Holy Cross Tuesday and at Crosby on Thursday.
Here’s the scoring for Wilby:
And the scoring for Kennedy:
