Juneau-Douglas High School boys basketball took to the glass Wednesday to out-rebound visiting West Valley for their third win of the season.<\/p>\n
JDHS\u2019 twin peaks of 6-foot-5 Erik Kelly and 6-foot-7 Bryce Swofford controlled the boards on both sides of the ball, denying the Wolfpack \u2014 who like to shoot threes \u2014 many second-chance opportunities while garnering easy putbacks on offense in the 64-46 win.<\/p>\n
Kelly and Swofford were a one-two punch on the score sheet with 20 and 19 points respectively; JDHS\u2019 preliminary stats show Kelly gobbled up a staggering 25 rebounds.<\/p>\n
The pair are a winning combination, especially against smaller teams who like to shoot.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were looking to work inside, definitely get our bigger guys some touches in there,\u201d Swofford said. \u201cI think it paid off, we played to our strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n
JDHS dominated the first quarter, limiting the Wolfpack to a single shot on every possession zero 3-point buckets. After a 14-6 opening frame, West Valley found their shot in the second, with senior guard Jaden Whiteside hitting three threes in as many minutes and flushing a pair of free throws to narrow the deficit to 18-16.<\/p>\n
JDHS coach Robert Casperson said the Wolfpack \u201cwilled themselves\u201d back into the game. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have some really good athletes and some kids with a lot of pride over there. They played really hard and started hitting some shots,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Another factor played into the Wolfpack\u2019s brief comeback: JDHS wasn\u2019t feeding their bigs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a little ahead of ourselves,\u201d Swofford said. \u201cWe\u2019re not too experienced yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
JDHS pushed their lead back to 35-28 by half.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt halftime I talked about how we want to guard a couple of people, and if we can get the ball inside and attack them that way, they maybe have to look at a different lineup,\u201d Casperson said.<\/p>\n
West Valley was led in the defeat by Whiteside with 15, 11 of which came in the second quarter. Keon Campbell followed his lead with 10.<\/p>\n
Sophomore guard John Hamrick followed Kelly and Swofford on the scoresheet with nine. Ulyx Bohulano, who had to step out briefly with a leg injury, added eight.<\/p>\n
Coverage of JDHS\u2019 second game against West Valley, played Thursday night, didn\u2019t make Friday\u2019s print deadline. Look for a game story at the Empire online at juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n
\nCRIMSON BEARS 64, WOLFPACK 46<\/strong><\/p>\n Juneau-Douglas 14 21 17 12 \u201464<\/p>\n West Valley 6 22 9 9 \u201446<\/p>\n Juneau-Douglas (64) \u2014 Kelly 20, Swofford 19, Hamrick<\/p>\n 9, Bohulano 8, Mallinger 5, Milligan 3<\/p>\n West Valley (46) \u2014 Whiteside 15, Campbell 10, Fields-Colbert<\/p>\n 8, Mingo Jr. 6, Keeton 3, Davis 2, Garcia 2<\/p>\n Free throws \u2014 Juneau-Douglas 13-20, West Valley 7-14<\/p>\n 3-point goals \u2014 Juneau-Douglas 1, West Valley 1<\/p>\n Team fouls \u2014 Juneau-Douglas 13, West Valley 17<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Juneau-Douglas High School boys basketball took to the glass Wednesday to out-rebound visiting West Valley for their third win of the season. JDHS\u2019 twin peaks of 6-foot-5 Erik Kelly and 6-foot-7 Bryce Swofford controlled the boards on both sides of the ball, denying the Wolfpack \u2014 who like to shoot threes \u2014 many second-chance opportunities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17219"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}