Bellwood-Antis came into their game with Juniata Valley looking for their second win of the year and second in the Juniata Valley League. Coming off a loss at home to Bishop Guilfoyle, B-A was looking to even up their home record at 1-1.
\nJuniata Valley is well known for their three point shooting and Coach Tim Keech was looking to shut down the Hornet\u2019s ability to get open looks.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s no surprise that Juniata is going to shoot the three, but I\u2019d like to hold them under five made.\u201d
\nB-A\u2019s tough D and aggressive play helped keep that goal close to the mark that Coach wanted.
\nFirst quarter action finally picked up when Corey Lightner of Juniata Valley got a lay-up with 5:38 left in the quarter. Paul Greiner dropped in his first three pointer of the day with 4:40 left to put B-A up, 5-2. Greiner came right back 40 seconds later and drops in another 3 to put B-A up by six. JV comes right back with a Hall long ball to come back within three 8-5 with 3:30 left. Scoring died off a little towards the end of the quarter and B-A held the lead 12-9 at the end of one quarter of play.
\n Borst opened the second quarter, adding three free throws after being fouled on a three point attempt to make the score 15-14 with 7:10 left. Borst then drained a deep three to give Juniata Valley their first lead of the night, 17-15. With 4:42 left Mike Blazier of B-A grabbed two offensive rebounds and added the lay-up to make the score 21-18 in favor of the Devils.
\nBorst got a steal with 2:25 left and drained another long ball to his total to tie the score at 21. The Hornets jumped back into the lead and extended it 25-21, after a Hall steal for a lay-up, with 32 seconds left in the half. The score going into the half was 26-22.
\nFoul trouble was a major issue for Juniata Valley at the half, with two of their starters picking up three fouls each. Bellwood-Antis only had three team fouls at the break. B-A also spent most of the game in the bonus, going to line 31 times before the night was done.
\nGreiner dropped in his third and final trey of the night pulling B-A within one point, 26-25 with 7:34 left in the quarter.
\nAfter Lightner dropped in a three pointer to make it 32-26, Coach Keech takes a timeout to talk to his guys, with 3:45 left in the third. Greiner responded after the timeout with a steal and a lay-up to make it 32-28 with 3:03 left.
\nB-A was down 34-30 when they got six free throws after back to back three point fouls by JV. B-A made three of those six shots to make it 37-33 with 1:11 left in the third. With 30 seconds to go in the quarter, L.J. Seidel made a nice cut to the basket and scored the bucket to make the score at the end of three periods, 37-35.
\nFourth quarter action was fast and furious. The nets were set ablaze as both teams dropped in basket after basket.
\nOnly two points separated the two teams when the madness started. Early in the fourth when Blue Devil Aaron Bell appeared to make a three, but the official called his toe on the line, therefor making it a two-pointer to tie the score at 37.
\nWith 5:52 left and the score still tied, Paul Greiner stepped in and drew an offensive charge to get the ball back into the hands of the Blue Devils. Greiner came down on offense and made a fantastic basket amid crowd of defenders to put B-A up by two, 39-37. B-A added another basket, but Juniata Valley answered back with five points in a row to tie the game at 42 with 4:44 left.
\nThe Bellwood-Antis gymnasium erupted with Bellwood-Antis going on an 8-0 run including a pair of three\u2019s by Bell and McClellan, and a lay-up, with McClellan adding the lay-up. This run encouraged the Juniata coach to call a timeout and try to slow down the B-A offense with 3:42 left in the game.
\n Bellwood and Juniata traded off basket for the rest of the game and B-A held on to win 59-52.
\nCoach Keech feels very good about his club right now being 2-1 in the JVL and 2-2 overall.
\n\u201cThis was a very important game for us to establish ourselves in the JVL,\u201d said Keech. \u201cWe had to come out and play well at home and I thought we played good defense and rebounded fairly well and we took advantage of what [Juniata Valley] was giving us. It took us almost until Christmas last year to get out second win so I\u2019m happy with where we are right now.\u201d
\nB-A\u2019s 8-0 run really opened up the game for the Devils. It got the crowd into the game even more, and it made Juniata Valley almost get into panic mode. Coach Keech felt that the run they went on really helped his kids get focused.
\n\u201cThe thing I like was in the second half the kids didn\u2019t let Juniata Valley pull away,\u201d said Keech. \u201cWe were down and the kids coming off the bench came in with fresh legs and played hard and got us back into the game and that\u2019s what we really needed at that point.\u201d
\nPaul Greiner again scored in double digits with a game high 21. Besides Greiner B-A also had Bell (13) and McClellan (11) jump into the double digits tonight.
\n\u201cThe thing that I liked about them tonight is, we didn\u2019t force things,\u201d Keech explained. \u201cThey took shots that came to them and didn\u2019t look to try and force things. We ran the offense and if the shot was there, they stepped up and made the shot.\u201d
\nBellwood went to the charity stripe tonight 31 times, but only made 19 of those 31. Coach Keech is still looking for improvement from the line.
\n\u201cSixty-one percent for the team is not good enough for me. I think we should be somewhere up around 74-80% for the team. We\u2019re good shooters,\u201d exhorted Keech, \u201cbut just can\u2019t seem to make foul shots. We\u2019re going to continue to work with the kids at practice and look to see better results in our next game.\u201d
\nThe Bellwood Jayvees came out winners as well going on a 17-3 run to pull out a close one, 38-36.
\nBellwood\u2019s next game is the makeup game with Glendale on Saturday at Bellwood. Tip-off is scheduled for 6 p.m. for JV\u2019s and 7:30 for Varsity. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Bellwood-Antis 59 \u00a0Juniata Valley 52
\nBELLWOOD-ANTIS – McClellan 3 4-4 11, Bell 3 6-8 13, DeArmitt 1 2-4 5, Greiner 7 4-7 21, Blazier 2 1-2 3, Seidel 1 0-0 2, Delgrosso 0 1-3 1. TOTALS 17 19-31 59
\nJUNIATA VALLEY – Gildea 0 0-0 0, Borst 3 4-5 13, Lightner 8 0-1 20, Boyd 1 0-0 2, Beatty 1 0-0 2, Hall 3 2-4 9, DeVore 2 2-4 6, Burkey 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 18 8-14 52.
\nScore By Quarters
\nBellwood-Antis \u00a012 \u00a010 \u00a013 \u00a024 – 59
\nJuniata Valley \u00a0 \u00a0 9 \u00a0 17 \u00a011 \u00a015 – 52
\nThree point goals: Bellwood-Antis 6 (Greiner 3, DeArmitt 1, Bell 1, McClellan 1).
\nJuniata Valley 8 (Lightner 4, Borst 3, Hall 1).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bellwood-Antis came into their game with Juniata Valley looking for their second win of the year and second in the Juniata Valley League. Coming off a loss at home to Bishop Guilfoyle, B-A was looking to even up their home record at 1-1. Juniata Valley is well known for their three point shooting and Coach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}