TURNERS FALLS — Turners Falls High School point guard Tionne Brown was doing a little bit of everything in the first half of Thursday’s Hampshire League game against Frontier Regional School.
The senior had a huge first half to stake his Indians out to a large lead and narrowly missed a triple-double in leading Turners Falls to a 67-47 victory.
Brown used his penetrating ability to not only score a game-high 21 points but also finished with 10 assists and 8 steals in the win. Brown had 17 points, 7 assists and 5 steals in the first-half alone as the unbeaten Indians (7-0) took a 36-24 lead into the break. Frontier cut the deficit to 8 early in the third quarter, but that was the closest the Red Hawks (1-6) could get, as a Tyler Lavin 3-pointer pushed the lead back to double figures for the Indians, and Frontier never got it back into single digits again. The big effort by Brown helped offset his team’s missing forward/center Josh Obuchowski, who was out with an illness.
“It’s tough without Obo out there. He’s a great offensive player and really gives us another man we can rely on to score,” Brown said. “Without him, I knew I was going to have to make a few more plays. Stuff was really opening up for me. I was getting steals and open shots, so it was easy for me.”
Brown had 5 points in the first quarter, then went on to score 12 in a row during the second quarter, the final 10 of which came after Frontier had gone on an 11-2 run to cut what had been a 21-5 lead down to 23-16. Brown then scored his 10 points, while Frontier netted only 4 in that span, and the Indians opened up a 33-20 lead.
Another huge factor in the win was the outside shooting of Ricky Craver, who finished with 15 points, including three 3-pointers, as well as the outside shooting of Tyler Lavin, who finished with 11 points, including three 3s.
“It just gives me another look and I have confidence that when I drive and kick it out they are going to knock down shots, and I’m not forcing any bad shots,” Brown said. “I’m short, so I get blocked a lot. But I know that if I get in a tough situation, I can kick it out and they are going to make the shots.”
The Indians also got a number of easy looks due to their defensive press, which created a number of turnovers by the Red Hawks and led to easy hoops. Craver said that due to the Indians’ lack of height, they don’t want to get into a half-court game as much and prefer to get out and run.
“We were trying to run and run and that gets you open,” he said. “We are smaller than everyone else, and we knew we were going to be smaller than them today, so we wanted to get out and run on them.”
Jimmy Vaughn finished with 8 points in the win, and Anthony Peterson played well in the post, finishing with 6 points, but making his presence felt on defense.
Myles Freeman led the Red Hawks’ offense with 14 points, many of which were uncontested buckets when the Hawks were successful at breaking the press. Trevor Gilmore also had a nice night in the loss with 13 points.
Things will get tougher for the Indians next week. Turners Falls travels to Pioneer Valley Regional School on Monday at 7, and then goes to Mahar Regional School on Thursday. Frontier hosts Smith Academy on Monday at 7.