On Saturday afternoon, the boys’ basketball team traveled across the Sound to Trumbull, CT for a non-league match-up with Christian Heritage School and came away with an 81-72 victory. The Bears had to adjust to some unfamiliar rules against the Kingsmen, who play in the Housatonic Valley Athletic League. Instead of four eight-minute quarters, the game was divided into two 16-minute halves while the 35-second shot clock the Bears normally play by was lessened to 30.

Despite the unfamiliar surroundings, the Bears jumped out to an 11-2 lead thanks to buckets from T. J. Wachter and Seamus Scanlon and a pair of 3-pointers from Jai Narain & Scanlon. The Kingsmen responded with an eight-point spurt to pull within a point, but another Narain 3-pointer and a Wachter bucket pushed the lead back to 16-10. Back-to-back 3-pointers knotted the game at 16-16, but the Bears retook the lead with three straight free throws. After a Kingsmen bucket the Bears led 19-18 at the midway point of the first half.

Three more free throws and a Scanlon bucket left the Brook up 25-20, but two Kingsmen buckets pulled them back within 26-24. From there, a Scanlon layup ignited an 11-0 run to give the Brook a cushion they would largely maintain the rest of the game as Heritage got no closer than four points the rest of the way. Heritage responded with a 7-0 spurt to pull back within 37-31 with under a minute left, then followed with a 3-pointer with 13 seconds left, but a Scanlon bucket with 6.9 remaining gave the Brook a 40-34 lead at the break. Scanlon led the Bears with 18 points in the first half.

The Blue & White lead swelled back to 10 at 49-39 early in the second half thanks to six free throws and a Scanlon score. The lead then grew to 13 points on two occasions at 63-50 and 67-54 before consecutive Scanlon buckets push the Bear advantage to its zenith at 75-59 with 4:38 remaining on the way to the nine-point win.

Scanlon finished with a career-high 33 to lead all scorers while Owen Sobel (17), Narain (14), Wachter (9), Andy D’Alessio (5), and CJ Edwards (2) rounded out the scoring for the Brook.

One of the stories of the game was free throw shooting as the Bears shot an astounding 41 shots from the charity stripe, hitting 26 of them, while the Kingsmen shot 14, connecting on 10.

_____________________________________________________________