Bears too much for Bruins in opener
Tyler Rouch
Staff Writer
The atmosphere in the Miller gymnasium on the night of Monday Nov 16 was ecstatic. The bleachers were packed, the Bruins had their pregame music blasting and the table was set for them to get their first big win of the season. Unfortunately, the Mott Community College Bears had different plans.
Although the game was close for the majority of the first half, the Bruins never seemed to get in sync offensively. The Bears harassed the Bruins defensively and out gained the competition on rebounds all night.
The Bears would often force the Bruins to pick up their dribble before they wanted to. This resulted in a lot of careless passes and forced shots, which eventually lead to big runs for the opposition. The Bears would walk into halftime with a 25-38 lead.
When the second-half began the Bears stayed with the same tenacious defensive presence. To the Bruins credit, they would find somewhat of an offensive rhythm through their guard play in Ronald Bracey and Bill Young.
But Mott would find scoring and energy from a player who didn’t have such a hot first half. Doug Anderson would explode for five of his six dunks in the second-half, too much for the Bruins to overcome.
The final score of the contest was 62- 80 in favor of Mott Community College.
Coach Melvin McKnight talked about the loss, and how his team performed, saying, “I think we’re a young team. If you take a look at Mott, they are a very strong team year-in and year-out with a lot of good players. My assistant coach and I knew what to expect walking into this game, but we just told the kids to play hard and work some of their first-game jitters out.”
“I think we can be a good team,” McKnight continued. “We just need to find a way to get more in sync and I think we’ll be fine.”
The team’s leading scorer and starting point guard Bill Young agreed the team suffered from jitters. “We had good effort but we just couldn’t pull it together,” Young said. “We still need to work some jitters out but we know that. I think we have a chance to win some games if we continue to work hard and be patient.”
The team was led in scoring by Young, who had 14 points, and Ronald Bracey, who finished with 12.