Brushfork – A blazing start wasn’t enough to propel Bluefield over a county rival.
Trailing 13-3 in the first quarter, Princeton rallied and held off a late Beaver charge to pull off a season sweep of Bluefield with a 66-61 victory Monday night in Brushfork.
Princeton utilized its size advantage well, forcing the Beavers to take almost as many 3-pointer shots (22) as they did 2-pointers (23) while also out-rebounding them 36-22.
Sixteen of those boards came on the offensive end, allowing the Tigers to feast on second-chance opportunities.
“I was on my guys all night,” Princeton head coach Robb Williams said. “I really thought we should have had better output because we’re much bigger and we’re stronger this year. I’m actually disappointed, to be honest, I thought we would do better than that inside, and their zone did a nice job of stopping us from pounding and ball inside. It was a smart play by their coaching staff to run a zone. We don’t see too many zones but they’re so small, you know, from a standpoint. Their zone didn’t really bother us from an offensive standpoint, but our bigs didn’t go in as much as we typically would like.”
For the Beavers the strategy on offense remained the same – rely on a jump-shot heavy attack to score.
Early it was effective.
Britt Beasley opened the game with a 3 for the Tigers before the Beavers unleashed a barrage of their own, getting a pair of treys from Ricky Dunford and Jase Smith. Devin Totten joined in on the action with a corner 3 before Dunford sandwiched the 13-0 run with another trey, putting the hosts ahead 13-3.
But a timeout quelled the run and flipped the momentum entirely.
Beasley started the charge with another 3, followed by a pair of layups and free throws from Jayce Gum. Eli Riffe snapped the skid with a layup for the Beavers but Gum continued his assault with a 3 to tie the game at 15.
When the dust settled the Tigers held a 20-19 advantage after a quarter despite the early hole.
“I won’t say exactly what I said to them (during the timeout), but, they needed to have some intensity,” Williams said. “We came out really lethargic. Played very well Saturday against Shady and I think they were riding that high feeling of being in a competitive game with arguably the best team the state (in Class AAA) and come out here against Bluefield, not the Bluefield team that they’ve typically been, I think they thought they was gonna play average.
“There was no urgency. I chewed them out a little bit and then changed my presses. To be honest with you, I decided to mix up a lot, knowing that they have a younger team and it worked. They truly weren’t able to process fast and of course, coaches can, but younger players can’t do that. So I that was strategically changing my presses up to our different colors that we name our presses. We were able to run the 2-2-1, a 2-1-2, 1-2-2, half court, three-quarters, and we got a lot of points right off the bat.”
Beasley gave the Tigers the lead for good at 23-21, kicking off a 15-6 run that spanned nearly 12 minutes across the second and third quarter.
During that spurt Bluefield’s offense struggled, failing to produce its first points of the third quarter until Jase Smith nailed a 3 with just under four minutes remaining in the third quarter. During the middle two quarters the hosts were just 9 of 24 (30 percent) from the field.
The Tigers used that buffer to build a double-digit advantage that grew to as many as 12 points at the end of the third quarter.
But the Beavers went down swinging. A pair of Amari Helms free throws and a layup cut the deficit the six at 52-46 early in the final fame with Totten later canning a 3 to make it 54-50.
Helm split a pair of free throws to bring it back within a possession but Daniel Jennings capped a three-point play at the line to stop the bleeding. The Beavers, falling behind by seven again, fought to get back within 3 following another Smith 3 but a short Gum jumper in the final minute effectively sealed the deal.
“We really struggled offensively during that time because we could have easily pulled away,” Williams said. “We go through spurts in just about every game where we played great defense. I can go through game after game where for a quarter, we could stop anybody. And then the next quarter we look like we couldn’t stop anybody. So, the third quarter was our good stoppage quarter.
“Unfortunately, we really couldn’t make anything. We missed a lot of easy shots. We were getting the ball in, we weren’t even taking bad shots. We just weren’t making anything underneath, which was disappointing for us. We didn’t do anything special on defense during that stretch, we just had a little more intensity. Again, I mixed a couple presses here and there that were different looks. I was hoping, to be honest, to get a big lead so we could rest some guys for Woodrow (Tuesday).”
Smith led all scorers with 28 points, joined in double figurers by his teammate, Amari Helms, with 12 points.
Princeton placed three ind double figures led by Gum who netted 16 and grabbed 10 rebounds. Bealey added 13 points and Brad Mossor 10.
P: 20 15 16 15 – 66
B: 19 8 12 22 – 61
Princeton
Britt Beasley 13, Brad Mossor 10, Jayce Gum 16, Wyatt Cline 3, Nick Bailey 9, Zayden Neely 7, Daniel Jennings 8
Bluefield
Amari Helm 12, Jase Smith 28, Ricky Dunford 6, Devin Totten 9, Eli Riffe 6
