Bluejays too much for struggling St. Mary
Tabor men waltz past Spires for third straight win, 57-28
By RYAN RICHTER
Sports writer
With no wins in league play and just one on the year, the St. Mary Spires appear the team for KCAC teams to bully around this season.
With an obvious advantage over the overmatched Spires, Bluejay coach Don Brubacher used the 40:00 to figure out how to dissect a spread zone defense.
"We had something we needed to work on and that was offense against a spread-zone defense," he said. "We never did figure it out in the first half, but it appeared to me we got to the point where we did a nice job executing against it the second half so that was one thing we obviously needed to do."
After a first half which saw the two teams combine for just 32 points, the Bluejays (9-8, 6-2 KCAC) ran away with it the second half on their way to an easy 57-28 win.
The win helps Tabor pull into a two-way tie for runner-up in the league with the Ottawa Braves.
Tabor should have been able to mail this one in before the tip-off.
St. Mary didn't get their first basket until nearly 4:30 had gone by in the first frame.
Getting a shot was hard enough, let alone getting it to fall.
Still, the Bluejays were passing the ball around the perimeter casually until somebody felt like throwing a shot up, hoping to get it to fall.
That was a big reason why Tabor only had a 4-2 lead with 15:36 left in the first half and went 3-for-16 from behind the arc.
"We really struggled to play offense," Brubacher said, "and we got quite a lot of our offense in transition."
The Spires didn't score again for another 4:19 and not again for more than 7:00.
Instead of having a comfortable lead, though, the Bluejays were only up 17-6 on their way to shooting a frigid 8-of-31 the first 20:00.
Tyler Weinbrenner led all scorers at the half with five.
With a triple from Weinbrenner and a three-point play from Pat Miller, Tabor ended the first half on a 6-3 run for a 23-9 lead.
"The other approach (facing zone) is to attack the heart of zone, penetrate the zone, with the pass, with the dribble, and with positioning the start of the second half," said Brubacher. "That's what we talked about and we tried to get that done the first half and we simply didn't get it done.
"We talked about it some more at halftime and the second half, we attacked the heart of the zone."
The Bluejays took the ball to the hole, hitting the first 13 of their 15 shots to put the game out of reach with a 12-0 run.
Six of Grant Brubacher's game-high nine points came in the second half's first 4:25, all high percentage shots.
Don Brubacher got all of his players in the second half with the game firmly in control and the Bluejays shooting a sweltering 67 percent and 44 for the game.
Weinbrenner and Miller each scored seven points with Weinbrenner hauling in a team-high six rebounds.
Defensively, the Bluejays limited the Spires to just 47 shots of which 12 fell for a ragged 26 percent.
Tabor faces a challenging week on the road starting Thursday in North Newton against Bethel and then Saturday at Lindsborg against the dangerous Bethany Swedes.
Saturday's tip is slated for 7 p.m.
kansas Wesleyan
With KWU looking to pull off an upset, Coyote coach Jerry Jones' farewell tour made a stop Thursday night in Hillsboro.
But KWU's shot for a surprise faded down the stretch with the Bluejays hanging on a for 71-61 win.
As usual, the Bluejays struggled rebounding with the Coyotes converting a whopping 20 rebounds offensively into 22 points.
That, combined with Tabor's turning the ball over trying to get it inside was huge in the Coyotes' breathing down the Bluejays' necks the first half even with Tabor shooting 61 percent from the floor.
Playing stationary offense, Tabor found itself having to battle back from seven-point deficits twice the first half, thanks to KWU getting 17 points from 13 Bluejay mistakes.
After six lead changes and four ties, Miller finally got the Bluejays over the hump for good, 32-31, with a three-point play with 1:31 left before the break.
The Bluejays extended their lead as many as 18 the second half only to watch the Coyotes cut it in half with just under 2:00 left.
But Tabor kept adding to the lead, hitting 3-for-4 at the free- throw line the final 1:37.
Four-fifths of the Bluejay starters broke into double figures with Brad Gattis scoring a game-high 21 points.
Chris Metcalf followed with 15 points and game-high eight rebounds while Matt Nelson and Grant Brubacher each contributed 10 points.
Tabor turned in one of its better shooting performances of the year, hitting 56 percent, but struggling again both at the line and behind the arc with 62 and 15 percent, respectively.
