WHITE HALL - Going up against the defending WIVC champions is no picnic for your second game of the season.
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That’s what the Greenfield-Northwestern boys basketball Tigers had to face on Tuesday night.
The Tigers fell to the Brown County Hornets 61-30 in the first round of the North Greene Spartan Classic in White Hall.
“Brown County’s extremely talented, they’re a veteran group, and the defending WIVC champions and there’s a reason for that,” Tigers head coach Joe Pembrook said. “They’re well coached, play extremely hard, and they applied some pressure tonight that we just haven’t been able to match or do against one-another in practice. It got the best of our kids in critical moments and let them go on some runs where they pulled away from us.”
The Tigers played right with the Hornets in the first quarter and trailed 11-6, but Brown County managed to outscore Greenfield-Northwestern 21-7 with eight points from Jonah Farve, and a three-point buzzer beater by Skyler Moorman. That gave the Hornets a 32-12 lead at halftime, and the bleeding wouldn’t stop there as the game progressed.
Six-foot-eleven Ben Bayless led the Tigers in scoring with ten points, and the team attempted several times to take advantage of his superior height but running plays and lobbing the ball to him inside. However, several times Brown County was anticipating the Tigers on doing that and were there to poke the ball away.
“This is the first time we’ve seen that man-to-man pressure, and it’s always a great learning experience for us,” Pembrook said. “The timing of our offense was off a little bit, and we had a hard time dealing with their physicality. To their credit, they got us uncomfortable on the defensive end. Hopefully, we use it as a learning experience and get better.”
Sophomore Nathan Hendricker scored six of his ten points in the third quarter to help the Hornets get out to a 49-21 going into the fourth quarter. Bayless scored six of his ten points in the final frame, including a steal and a layup from sophomore guard Ben Nord.
Farve led all scorers with 13 points for Brown County, and Moorman followed up with 12. Hendricker and Darian Drake each finished with ten points apiece.
The Hornets will play Western in the semifinals on Thursday at 8 P.M.
Greenfield-Northwestern faces Griggsville-Perry on Wednesday at 5 P.M.
