Bellwood-Antis traveled to Mount Union for a Juniata Valley League boys basketball game on Monday night where the Trojans came out as hot as the temperature in their gym and just kept on going. Mount Union showed a lot of the reasons Bellwood-Antis coach Tim Keech expressed the opinion that they are the best team in the league, despite not winning the first cycle. MU outscored the Blue Devils 26-10 in the opening quarter to take control early, then continued to pour it on, outscoring Bellwood-Antis in all four quarters for an 82-45 humbling.
\nThe Trojans and Blue Devils traded treys right off the bat and it seemed like it might be a battle of two super heavyweights going at each other for the full 32 minutes. That was not to be the case however. After a pair of three-pointers by Shawn Weiand kept the score close (7-6 Mount Union), Mount Union exploded for a 19-4 run with the Blue Devils only points coming on baskets by junior Paul Greiner on consecutive trips downcourt that cut the Trojan lead to 15-10. The hosts then ran off the final 10 points of the quarter.
\n\u201cWe knew coming down, even though they weren\u2019t going to win the first cycle, I thought that this was the best team in the league,\u201d explained coach Keech. \u201cThey have three starters back from a team that played at St. Francis last year (Playing into the district semifinals) and we knew they were going to be good.\u201d
\nMark DelGrosso nailed a trey and Tyler McClellan connected on a drive to narrow the score a bit to 26-15. That was only a brief burst however that was over and done with, while Mount Union scored 12 straight points until Aaron Bell broke the string with a basket, but the Trojans ended the half with six more points to take a 44-17 lead into the locker room at the half.
\nThe second half didn\u2019t go much better for Bellwood-Antis. Mount Union scored the first four points to start the mercy clock running with a 30-point lead 47-17.
\nGreiner fired in a three-pointer and Weiand and DelGrosso each added a bucket to get the score deficit under 30 at 52-24, but Mount Union scored nine straight before a Weiand short jumper and long three-pointer, and then added five more before baskets by Mike Blazier and Weiand ended the third quarter with the Trojans firmly in command 66-33.
\nMount Union opened the fourth quarter by running off 10 straight point before Pat McCracken canned a trey to cut the score to 76-39. Tyler McClellan added a trey and a layup at the buzzer and Greiner hit one of two free throws to complete the scoring for B-A.
\nWeiand scored 18 points to lead the Blue Devils. Greiner and McClellan each added seven points and Mark DelGrosso had five points and five assists.
\n\u201cMy biggest thing is, I can handle losing a game. That doesn\u2019t bother me in the least bit,\u201d said Keech. \u201cBut I think the way we lost tonight really has me disheartened. Mount Union to their credit, smelled it. They knew they could put up a big number on these kids. We rolled over and that bothers me more than anything. We talked in the pregame about pride, about having pride and what it means to wear that jersey, competing for all 32 minutes of the game. We didn\u2019t do that. We let them do whatever they wanted to. We didn\u2019t communicate on defense. We didn\u2019t make hard cuts when we had the ball. Mount Union, to their credit stepped it up. That\u2019s what good teams are going to do. I think we are a good team and have improved over the year, but we can\u2019t play basketball like that and think we are going to be successful.\u201d
\nJustin Price had a game-high 21 points for Mount Union, Isaiah Helton had 16 and Danny Puchalla added 15.
\nGame notes: Mount Union seldom gave the Blue Devils more than one look at the basket, outrebounding B-A 19-5….There were a total of 17 three-pointers-The Trojans had nine and Bellwood-Antis had eight….Mount Union used every player on the bench and nine different players scored….Mount Union is the only team to score more than 70 points against B-A this year….Bellwood-Antis (4-10) travels to Penns Valley on Wednesday.
\nMount Union 83 Bellwood-Antis 45
\nBELLWOOD-ANTIS – Bell 1 0-0 2, McClellan 3 0-0 7, Weiand 7 0-2 18, M. DelGrosso 2 0-0 5, Greiner 3 0-0 7, Plummer 0 0-0 0, Blazier 1 0-0 2, Edmiston 0 0-0 0, McCracken 1 0-0 3, Brunner 0 1-2 1, Boone 0 0-0 0, T. DelGrosso 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 18 1-4 45.
\nMOUNT UNION – Helton 7 0-0 16, Price 9 0-0 21, Puchalla 6 2-2 15, Zook 4 0-0 9, Morgan 2 1-3 5, Barger 2 0-0 4, McClain 0 0-0 0, Martinez 2 0-0 5, Pollicino 1 0-0 2, Dugway 2 0-0 5, Brown 0 0-0 0, McClure 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 35 3-5 82.
\nScore by Quarters
\nBellwood-Antis 10 7 16 12 – 45
\nMount Union 26 18 22 16 – 82
\nThree point goals: Bellwood-Antis 8 (Weiand 4, McClellan 1, M. DelGrosso 1, Greiner 1, McCracken 1)
\nMount Union 9 (Price 3, Helton 2, Puchalla 1, Zook 1, Martinez 1, Dugway 1).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bellwood-Antis traveled to Mount Union for a Juniata Valley League boys basketball game on Monday night where the Trojans came out as hot as the temperature in their gym and just kept on going. Mount Union showed a lot of the reasons Bellwood-Antis coach Tim Keech expressed the opinion that they are the best team […]<\/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-45164","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\/45164","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=45164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}