By By ERIKA PICKLES / Niles Daily Star
NILES – The No. 5 ranked Bridgman Bees visited Brandywine Friday evening for a Lakeland Conference match-up and walked away still perfect in the conference, handing the Bobcats a 74-61 loss.
For the first quarter of the contest, it seemed as though the Bees might have been in for a rough night. Brandywine only trailed by three points, 17-14, after the first eight minutes, and took the lead twice in the period. However, some major slip-ups in the second allowed Bridgman to take a demanding lead and hold onto it for the rest of the game.
Brandywine's Billy McDonald close the gap to just one point, 17-16, to open the second period when he made two successful free throws. Unfortunately, Bobcat head coach Nate Knapp said that's when his team for some reason stopped playing.
The Bees went on a 12-0 run and made it to the free throw line seven times within a matter of three minutes. With 3:03 left in the first half, Bill Bussey bombed a three-pointer for Brandywine, but Bridgman already carried a very comfortable 29-19 lead.
The Bees went on another shooting spree, going on a 10-0 run this time, allowing a 29-19 lead with just over one minute left in the second.
Zak Bollenbacher was the last to score for Brandywine in the first half when he made two successful free throws, as the Bees took a 44-21 lead into the third period.
"We caused a lot of turnovers, we weren't attacking like we should have been, we just stopped playing for about five minutes and you can't do that against a team like Bridgman. You have to play all 32 and we didn't," Bobcat head coach Nate Knapp said after the loss.
The Bobcats committed a whopping 20 turnovers in the first half alone and sent the Bees to the line 15 times.
"That really hurt us," Knapp added.
Bridgman coach Mike Miller was very pleased with his team's performance in the second quarter.
"We've had a lot of bad second periods and we have really been focusing on finishing them. Tonight I thought we did a great job of doing just that," Miller said.
Caleb Frazier opened the second half of play with two back-to-back buckets and one free throw for Brandywine. Once again, though, Bridgman went on a 10-0 run to stay well ahead of the Bobcats and ended the third with a 59-37 advantage.
Josh Benjamin gave hope to the Bobcat offense in the fourth when he scored three buckets within the first minute of play, cutting the lead to 59-43 with six minutes to play. Ten points on the Bees' end pushed the lead to 69-43 with just over three minutes to play.
Miller felt comfortable about bringing his starters out and giving his bench players playing time. However, he found himself putting his starters – Todd Hendricks, Zach Welsher, Jon Malm, Nick Sweet and Seth Coffing – back in the game with one minute remaining on the clock.
The Bobcats came back on offense and applied strong full court pressure on defense, which gave Bridgman problems. A 26 point lead was cut to 11 when Billy McDonald, Danny Williams and Benjamin all made it to the free throw line. McDonald went 6-6, with a bucket, Bussey made a successful four-point played when he was fouled at the three-point arc, and Benjamin was fouled on a basket.
"Brandywine did a great job in the fourth. their press was very effective," Miller said.
After putting his starters back in, though, and with just one minute remaining, the Bobcats had no choice but to foul and watched as time expired.
"There's a lot of things we could have done better. We didn't put pressure on the ball well and we caused a lot of turnovers and fouls," Knapp added.
Malm led all scorers on the night with 14 points for Bridgman. Coffing, Sweet and Zac Nemitz all added 12 points, while Hendricks broke the school record with 14 assists.
For Brandywine, McDonald had 11 points, Matt Harvey had 10 and Caleb Frazier ended with nine.