BROCKWAY – After scoring only sixteen points in their first game of the season Curwensville boys head basketball coach Matt Wassil wanted to see some offensive improvement. The Golden Tide did put 37 points on the board Tuesday night but unfortunately they ran into a Brockway Rover team that came out aggressive on both ends of the court while knocking down nine three-pointers in a convincing 62-37 win over the visiting Tide.
Wassil did say afterwards, “I thought that the kids did play well in spots. It’s just that we need to play with a lot more confidence. Our execution was good but we did miss a lot of shots inside.”
The Tide started out taking a 6-5 lead over their hosts midway through the first quarter but then the Rovers went on a 22-4 run that stretched early into the second frame.
With that run Brockway lead 25-10 after the first eight minutes and 35-20 at the break as the Rovers were on their way to victory number one on the young season against two defeats under head coach Kurt Becker, now in his 16th season at Brockway.
Junior forward Fabio Fortunato was on fire for Brockway in the first stanza hitting for 12 while teammate Nick Anderson, a senior, put up 10 in the opening eight minutes.
The Tide struggled in the third quarter as Kyle Barrett scored all five of Curwensville’s points as Brockway stretched their commanding margin to 49-25 after three quarter by outscoring their opponents 14-5.
A truly big problem for the Tide, now 0-2, was the multitude of turnovers that started at the beginning of the game that lasted right up until the final buzzer. This was not lost on Wassil as he stated, “One glaring issue really sticks out, and that is the turnover issue. We just are committing way too many turnovers to be competitive at this point.”
The Rovers were paced by Nick Anderson with 17 and Fortunato with 16. Brockway only took three free throws on the evening in making just one. The Tide was 10 of 23 from the charity stripe.
Barrett was the points leader for the Golden Tide as the senior scored thirteen.
Curwensville has much work to do as Wassil closed by saying, “We certainly have lots of work to do before we can even start thinking about winning a game. And our first priority is taking care of the ball.”
In the junior varsity tilt it was Curwensville coming away with a 34-32 victory as Jesse Zorger hit a shot with a little over one second left to pull out the win.
The Tide will be home on Friday night when they host the Elkers of Ridgway with JV action starting at 6 pm and the varsity contest to immediately follow.
CURWENSVILLE – 37 Shelby McGary 1 1-2 3, Boone McGary 2 1-6 5, Shane Hoover 0 0-0 0, Alec Starr 1 2-6 4, Kyle Barrett 5 3-3 13, Will Rauckhorst 1 1-4 3, Tanner Elensky 1 2-2 5, Jesse Zorger 1 0-0 2, Dan Davis 1 0-0 2, Kyle Johns 0 0-0 0, TOTALS – 13 10-23 37.
BROCKWAY – 62 Kyle Braun 4 0-0 9, Nick Anderson 7 1-2 17, Fabio Fortunato 7 0-0 16, Ray Serafini 1 0-0 2, Cody Anderson 2 0-0 5, Levi Miller 1 0-0 3, Jake Rogos 0 0-0 0, Clay Anderson 0 0-0 0, Evan Hatfield 2 0-1 5, Max Hrinya 2 0-0 5, TOTALS – 26 1-3 62.
SCORE BY QUARTERS:
CURWENSVILLE 10 10 5 12 37
BROCKWAY 25 10 14 13 62
THREE-POINTERS: CURWENSVILLE – Elensky BROCKWAY – N. Anderson 2, Fortunato 2, Braun, Cody Anderson, Hatfield, Miller and Hrinya
OFFICIALS – Tom Link, Joe Stephan and Skip Powell