Fife basketball brings home another victory

Photo by David B. Hardt

CHRIS TORRES PASSING THE DEFENDER.

The Fife Trojans basketball team, in non-league play, has shown their dominance winning four of their last five games. The high-energy Trojans showed that same dominance over the visiting Seattle Christian Warriors, Dec. 15 securing the victory 67-53.

Fife head coach Mark Schelbert, shortly before the game, shared his thoughts on his team’s performance so far in non-conference play as well his thoughts on the game against the Warriors.

“Right now we are doing okay. We have a lot of cleaning up to do. There are little things we need to focus on getting better at to be good consistently. We have shown flashes of being good, but otherwise we have been too inconsistent. Tonight we want to cut down on turnovers and get a better rhythm on offense. Defensively we want to keep things simple and rebound better.”

With 4:39 of the first period complete, senior shooting guard Thomas Darneille had already scorched the net hitting back to back threes, then capping it off with a high-flying dunk. This set the tone and the lead, which the Trojans would hold on to for the duration of the game. Darneille would end the night leading the Trojans with 14 points, hitting three of five field-goal attempts, and going two of two from 3-point range. The first period ended with the Trojans up 21-7.

“The first half we were on a roll, and I just had a good stroke. In the second half we wanted to come out hard and play better defense,” Darneille said. “We wanted to hold them to certain amount of points, but it didn’t seem to work out. We really focused on boxing out and rebounding.”

The Trojans’ defense shut down the Warriors’ inside game in the first half with 6-3 senior big man Anthoney Brescia swatting balls away as if they were nothing but annoying flies. Brescia finished the night off with six points on offense going four of six from the field. On defense the Trojans kept pressure on the guards, causing the Warriors to turn the ball over and giving Fife 28 points on turnovers.

“The game was good and the team did well. On defense we started helping more on the weak side in the second half,” Brescia said. “I just have to get more mentally focused.”                       

In a definitive first half, the Trojans made more than 44 percent of their field-goal attempts and six out of eight of their 3-point shots, to go to the locker room with a comfortable 41-24 lead.

Schelbert gave his take on the first half of play.

“I like our energy that we started out with. I think we got a little sloppy looking at the scoreboard and started doing things in hurry.”

In the third period with the Trojans comfortable with their lead, Warrior guard MacKinnon Simpson (24 points) stepped up, taking advantage of a small weakness in the Trojans’ weak-side defense. This gave the Warriors an 8-2 run.

However, the Trojans’ offense picked up. Junior Kevin McCrossin (9 points, 3 of 3 from 3-point range) got hot, delivering back-to-back threes; this in turn ignited the defense and impeded the Warriors rally.

In the final period the Warriors rallied again but could not catch the Trojans because of costly turnovers and bad shot selection due to the aggressive Trojan defense. The Trojans’ deep bench delivered nicely with 19 points. Eight of those came from junior Jimmy Branche, a 6-3 shooting guard. Branche gave the Trojans the points they needed in the final period, hitting two jumpers to put the Warriors away for good. Jack Murrey, Jr., a junior guard, contributed with 10 points, going 4 of 7 from the floor. He also grabbed four rebounds and had five steals.

“I think we work hard on defense, which made opportunities for our offense. At the end we just worked it around and found the open looks,” Branche said. “We still need to work on our weak-side defense. We are just going to work hard at practice.”

The Trojans will be on the road for the remainder of the year and will have their next home game on Jan. 12 against Eatonville.

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