The Bellwood-Antis Blue Devils found out the hard way about the old adage \u201cSpeed kills\u201d when the WPIAL\u2019s seventh place team Farrell bounced the Blue Devils out of the playoffs 62-49.
\nIt was bound to happen sooner or later. The Bellwood-Antis boys basketball team all season long, had been a notoriously slow starter. The second half had then belonged to the Blue Devils as they would come blitzing back to win. The formula can only work when the Blue Devils get control of the basketball.
\nOn Saturday afternoon at the DeGol Arena in the Maurice Stokes Fieldhouse on the St. Francis campus in Loretto, the inevitable happened. Bellwood-Antis ran into Farrell in a first round playoff contest. The opponents built up a 33-21 lead at halftime and when it came time for the B-A charge, Farrell wouldn\u2019t allow the Blue Devils back into the ballgame.
\nOffensive rebounds figured huge for Farrell with Greg Smith leading the Steelers with 24 points, most of them coming on putbacks or after his quick-footed teammates, created space in the Bellwood-Antis defensive alignment.
\nFarrell pulled down 20 offensive boards along the way to a 43-15 domination in rebounding that meant the Blue Devils had to be almost perfect in shot selection and execution. Knowing they had to play zone to try to counter Farrell\u2019s quickness. Coach Tim Keech felt that worked pretty well. Except that his Blue Devils weren\u2019t able to rebound out of it very well.
\nBellwood-Antis was able to pull as close as 48-41 on Ryan Myer\u2019s drive and reverse layup with 5:16 left in the third quarter. Farrell called time out and then answered with two baskets and was able to hold off the Blue Devils from there on out.
\nRicky Shannon led Bellwood-Antis with 15 points and Ryan Myers added 14. Steve Crider, who canned three third-quarter buckets to keep the Blue Devils close, added eight points and Nate Carlson, who had the Blue Devils\u2019 only three-pointer, contributed seven points.
\n\u201cWe battled,\u201d said Crider. \u201cThere were times we didn\u2019t box out too well and there were times we did. They jumped higher than us.\u201d
\nFarrell took scoring advantages in all but the third period, when Bellwood-Antis edged the Steelers 15-14. Farrell, who competes at the Class AA level, actually is a Single-A school by enrollment, after competing in Quad-A until about 10 years ago, despite their enrollment.
\nBellwood-Antis closes the book on a 23-5 campaign that featured only it\u2019s third District VI title in school history.
\n\u201cOnly one team is going to win their last game at Hershey,\u201d said coach Keech. \u201cYou can\u2019t take away the effort our kids put into the preseason and just the journey we had this year. From beginning to end, this was such a great fun group to coach. Our underclassmen are going to have big shoes to fill. These kids did a heckuva job for Bellwood and I was happy just to be part of it.\u201d
\nFarrell 62 Bellwood-Antis 49
\nFARRELL – Dungee 3 0-0 7, Stinson 3 2-2 8, Smith 12 0-1 24, Clay 3 2-4 8, Phillips 3 0-0 6, Blackwell 1 1-2 3, Newby 2 2-2 6, Dunlap 0 0-0 0, Dinkins 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 22 7-11 62.
\nBELLWOOD-ANTIS Myers 4 6-8 14, Crider 4 0-0 8, Shannon 5 5-6 15, Carlson 3 0-0 7, Smith 2 1-4 5, Weiand 0 0-0 0, Hughes 0 0-0 0, Mattern 0 0-0 0, Rogers 0 0-0 0, Bell 0 0-0 0, Greiner 0 0-0 0, Plummer 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 18 12-18 49.
\nScore By Quarters
\nFarrell \t\t\t13 19 14 16 – 62
\nBellwood-Antis \t 9 12 16 13 – 49
\nThree-point goals: Farrell 1 (Dungee 1); Bellwood-Antis 1 (Carlson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Bellwood-Antis Blue Devils found out the hard way about the old adage \u201cSpeed kills\u201d when the WPIAL\u2019s seventh place team Farrell bounced the Blue Devils out of the playoffs 62-49. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The Bellwood-Antis boys basketball team all season long, had been a notoriously slow starter. The second […]<\/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-47002","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\/47002","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=47002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}