Leopards down Warriors after lengthy layoff
By Jose Negron
jnegron@yourmvi.com
The Belle Vernon Area boys basketball team hasn’t had the opportunity to play much over the past month.
The Leopards opened the season with a nonsection loss to Thomas Jefferson Dec. 11 before the government-mandated three-week shutdown of high school sports. Then, BVA resumed play by picking up its first section win over Uniontown on Jan. 8 only to have its lone game last week postponed.
The Leopards returned to the court for the first time in over a week and showed little rust in an early season showdown with Elizabeth Forward.
BVA used a late third quarter run to turn a slim lead into a more comfortable differential en route to a 59-47 victory over EF in Section 3-4A play.
“When you don’t play for a week and you’re just practicing, it can get boring,” BVA head coach Joe Salvino said. “Hopefully we can get into a rhythm now after this one.”
The Leopards (2-1, 2-0) led by eight points at halftime and maintained a sizable advantage early in the third quarter before the Warriors came rolling back.
The freshman duo of Charlie Meehleib and Vernon Settles hit back-to-back buckets with under three minutes left in the frame to cut BVA’s lead to 39-35.
After more than a minute of scoreless play, the Leopards delivered a crushing blow to their visiting foe as they went on an 8-0 run in the final 1:14 to extend their lead to 47-35 after one quarter of play.
Daniel Gordon went 5 for 5 from the free throw line during the spurt and Jake Haney added one of his four 3-pointers in the contest. Gordon finished with 17 points and Haney added 12 in the win.
“I loved the way we came out in the second half. We talked about a couple of things at halftime that we wanted to do better and the guys really did buy into what we wanted to do,” EF head coach Matt Loftis said. “We were close and we needed one more three or another bucket to cut that down to one or two, but we just couldn’t get it to fall. Then you look up and it’s back up to 10. That’s the thing about Belle Vernon, though, you can’t allow that run against them because you work so hard to get to a certain point and then it’s like it never happened.”
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