VERNON — Led by senior Duncan Moy’s 32 points, the Badger Braves’ offense exploded to defeat McDonald 85-55 on Friday.
“We’re playing really well right now and taking great shots off the ball. I don’t know how many mistakes Duncan made tonight, but I felt like it wasn’t that many.” Braves manager Josh Upshur said. “He was shooting the ball pretty well today. Preston (Guerasitano) actually had an off day today. I don’t think he shot a lot, but other guys stepped up and started the season. It was good that we played with more depth than before. The players stepped up and did their roles.”
The Badgers’ offense on Friday was free-flowing and ripe with highlight-reel passes and multiple dunks from Moy.
It’s easy to adopt a free-flowing style on the Braves (6-1) roster.
“I couldn’t even run a set tonight.” Upshur said. “Tonight was just a ‘get the ball and go’ type of game. And we’re able to do that. We’re able to do that because Duncan and Preston are running the show. The team gives us the press. (We) get the ball up the floor and finish. I’m not a guy that wants to slow things down.”
As has been the case all season, the Badgers fell a little behind early. They held the lead for most of the match, but were unable to completely pull away in the first half.
In the fading minutes before halftime, McDonald went on a run that erased a sizable lead and brought them within two points. But almost instantly, the Braves shut down the run and went on a breakup 10.
“(Stopping that run) was key for us.” Upshur said. “They cut it to four or five points, but we made a great run there at the end and started the second half with a 10-point lead. We put a little more pressure on them in the second half with traps and stuff. A lot of our defense generated offense tonight and that’s going to be the difference for us.”
With this loss, the Blue Devils fall to 3-3 on the season.
On the McDonald side, Drew Zajac led the way with 17 points, and Chris Ragazin added 15 points.
“We have to find ways to get better everywhere.” Blue Devils coach James Franceschelli said. “We had a big turnover of the ball tonight for a little bit. We have to focus on ourselves and get better every day if we want to be able to compete with the better teams in the area.”
“We’re in a bit of a pickle here, but at 3-3 against a young team, it could go either way. We have to decide if we want to go in the right direction. , our plan for the next few days until we play again is to get better at ourselves.”
The next match for both teams will be against Girard. The Braves have a week off, traveling to Girard on Friday, then MacDonald takes on the Indians on Tuesday.
With a grueling schedule coming up that includes Girard, Kennedy and Bristol, the Braves will need to quickly overcome a slow start.
“We have to start a little earlier. We just had too many turnovers. I think we had 11 to 16 players in the first half, which is too many for what we want to do.” Upshur said. “Our MO is still not very good defensively. We played well in the second half, but we still need to improve. In the second half, we started to move the traps a little more from there and created a little more offense.
“It’s fun. We get to fly around and do things like that and enjoy the highlights with Duncan.”
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