The Bellwood-Antis boys basketball team opened their 2004-05 season at Penns Valley on Monday evening.
Penns Valley had already played two ballgames in a highly competitive tournament, while the Blue Devils had gotten in just four practices since the B-A football players had come to practice, following their district championship and PIAA playoff tilt against Camp Hill. Penns Valley raced to a 54-37 win that was pretty much to be expected for their first time out.
“Penns Valley played in a quality tournament with Bald Eagle Area, Shikellamy and West Branch,” explained Bellwood-Antis coach Tim Keech. “They had some quality competition against a couple of the teams we will play later. The football players have had only four days of practice, it will take some time. We talked before the game, not about worrying about the scoreboard, but about playing throughout the entire game, and I think we did.”
Tyler McClellan opened the scoring with a bucket to send the Blue Devils off to a 2-0 start, but Penns Valley scored nine points in a row, before McClellan pumped in another goal. Tyler added a free throw, but through the end of the first quarter and beginning of the second, the Rams scored six more points for a 15-5 advantage midway through the second period.
A Paul Greiner basket and two foul shots and a basket by McClellan only served to keep the deficit at 10. Penns Valley went on a streak again to reach halftime up 32-17. A free throw by L. J. Seidel and one by Greiner plus a pair of baskets by McClellan were all the Blue Devils could muster.
McClellan scored 13 of his team-high 15 points in the first half and Greiner added three points, but the Blue Devils, at a height disadvantage was outrebounded by Penns Valley 18-3 in the opening two quarters, that meant very few second shots and the net seemed to have a lid on it for Bellwood-Antis.
The Rams were led in the first half by 6-2 Curt Shulman with 13 points and 6-7 Dan Lewis with 11 more. Penns Valley had those two large sized players in the game, along with 6-4 Matt Brown and 6-4 Tyler Williams, who alternated.
The Blue Devils tallest players are Mike Blazer at 6-3 and Greiner, Aaron Bell and Tony DelGrosso, each 6-1.
Although the final score didn’t show it, the Blue Devils played the Rams even in the second half. B-A hit a 5-1 scoring string to begin the third quarter, but Penns Valley stretched their advantage to 42-22 at the end of three quarters.
Bellwood-Antis outscored the Rams 15-12 in the fourth quarter to cut the final score to 54-37.
McClellan and Greiner had three steals and three rebounds each. Greiner finished with seven points and Aaron Bell had six points.
B-A did better in all categories in the second half, including leading in rebounds 12-10 through the final two quarters and being outscored just 22-20.
“Everybody that was in the game for us played hard,” said Keech. “We made a lot of mistakes, but we are going to get better. The kids from football are going to get better every game. I feel good right now. I know it’s a 17-point loss and people will say he must be nuts. But you know what-we put in a brand new offense and I thought we did a lot of good things with that. We had a lot of open shots. I was disappointed at the beginning of the game, we made some nice cuts, we didn’t catch the ball, we missed some easy shots. That comes with first game jitters. A lot of these kids have never started before, let along see play in varsity action. All-in-all, the things that I saw that we did wrong, we can correct. And I think that’s real important.”
Shulman led Penns Valley with 21 points and Lewis added 13.
Bellwood-Antis (1-0) is back in action at Claysburg-Kimmel on Thursday. The Junior Varsity game will begin at 6 p.m. with the varsity following at 7:30.
Junior Varsity
Penns Valley defeated the Bellwood-Antis junior varsity 44-27 to complete the sweep over B-A. Blaze Winterstein had nine points and Brandon Boone added six points for the Little Blue Devils. Tony DelGrosso pulled down six rebounds.
Neil Myer scored 18 points for Penns Valley.
Penns Valley 54 Bellwood-Antis 37
BELLWOOD-ANTIS – McClellan 4 7-8 15, Bell 2 2-2 6, Blazer 0 0-0 0, A. DeArmitt 1 1-3 3, Greiner 3 1-2 7, Edmiston 0 0-0 0, Boone 0 0-0 0, DelGrosso 0 1-2 1, Seidel 1 1-2 3, Christner 0 0-0 0, Winterstein 1 0-1 2. TOTALS: 12 13-20-37.
PENNS VALLEY – Weist 0 0-0 0, Shulman 8 1-4 21, Lewis 5 3-3 13, M. Brown 1 0-0 2, Lavoie 3 1-2 7, Williams 3 0-0 6, Hale 0 0-0 0, Homan 0 0-0 0, Ford 0 0-0 0, Showers 0 0-0 0, Smith 0 1-2 1, N. Brown 0 0-0 0, Wingard 0 0-0 0, Markle 1 0-0 2. TOTALS 22 9-13 54.
Score by Quarters
Bellwood-Antis 5 12 5 15 – 37
Penns Valley 13 19 10 12 – 54
Three point goals- BA -none
Penns Valley 1 (Schulman1)
