Bellefonte boys basketball goes on 22-6 run in third quarter, defeats Tyrone 59-42
Tyrone and Bellefonte entered Tuesday night’s matchup as the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the Mountain League.
The two teams were locked in a back-and-forth battle in the first half with Bellefonte leading 22-19. Then, the Red Raiders pulled away by outscoring the Golden Eagles 22-6 in the third quarter to eventually win 59-42.
Bellefonte’s fuel to win was from its nightmare — a 55-54 buzzer-beating loss on Jan. 13 on the road against Tyrone.
“I basically told them what happened down there — losing to them by one point at the buzzer,” Bellefonte head coach Rick Hall said. “It came down to we’ve got to pick up our defensive intensity and help side defense. We need to really sag off on the weak side and rebound. Everyone has to rebound.
“Earlier in the year, our guards were breaking out too soon and people were getting long rebounds on us. But the whole ... team rebounded. The defense was awesome. I don’t know how many points they scored in the third quarter, it couldn’t have been many.”
Blair Eckley-Jones led Bellefonte with 16 points, continuing his strong play on the season. While he had just four points at the end of the first half, he continued to let the game come to him by finding open cuts to the basket and scoring off of turnovers in transition. He felt that his team allowed him to ease into the game and picked him up when he needed it.
“I thought it was amazing,” Eckley-Jones said. “When the guards attacked, I got open and I could get involved and score. Ever since we were little, we’ve been at it with Tyrone. We battled and we lost by one earlier in the season. That hurt and we just wanted to get it back.”
His teammate, Nick Way, was the second-leading scorer for the Red Raiders with 13 points. Way only had two points in the first half, but he too got going with a strong third quarter. The senior guard drilled a 3-point shot and added a layup in the third quarter before scoring six more points in the fourth to close out the Golden Eagles.
“Last year, we struggled in the third quarter, especially in games where we were up,” Way said. “So this year, we’ve put a lot of focus into coming out of halftime by keeping things rolling and we did that tonight. We closed the game out well. (It’s all about) conditioning, staying focused the whole game and not getting distracted by a few bad plays here and there.”
The Red Raiders had five different scorers in the first quarter with Alex Ebeling and Ty Kroell leading the way with a 3-pointer each. It was Tyrone forward Keegan Gwinn who led all scorers with eight points in the first period, propelling the Golden Eagles to a 14-12 lead at the end of the quarter.
Bellefonte came back swinging in the second quarter, paced by five fast-break points by Cole Crissman off the bench and stellar interior defense by Eckley-Jones. Kroell and Eckley-Jones added two points each.
The Red Raiders came out firing on all cylinders in the third quarter with a 15-0 run and finished off by outscoring the Golden Eagles 22-6 to open the second half. Bellefonte continued to cruise in the fourth quarter with four points by Kroell and six apiece from Eckley-Jones and Way.
Bellefonte 59, Tyrone 42
B (16-3): Eckley-Jones 16, Way 13, Kroell 12, Crissman 7 , Brungard 5, McCaslin 3, Ebeling 3
T (14-7): DeHaas 12, Gwinn 10, Lang 9, Gampe 6, Rhoades 5
This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 11:07 PM.
