The Bellwood-Antis boys basketball team parleyed big scoring margins in the opening and closing quarters and withstood a Claysburg attempt for an upset in the middle two quarters for a 52-36 victory on Friday evening at Bellwood.
Paul Greiner, who scored a game-high 20 points for the Blue Devils, and Tyler McClellan opened the first quarter with treys to jump Bellwood-Antis out to a 6-0 lead. Neither team was sharp at the start with those two long-range bombs the only scores in the first four minutes of the game.
Peter Dehoff got into the act with a three-pointer to get Claysburg on the scoreboard, but Adam DeArmitt answered that for the Blue Devils with a three of his own. Greiner, who started the scoring, ended it in the quarter with a pair of free throws for an 11-5 B-A advantage.
Claysburg tied the score early in the second period, with Dennis “Whitey” Weyandt throwing in three baskets to knot the score at 11-11, and again at 13-13. Blaze Winterstein came off the bench to give the Blue Devils some scoring punch knocking down a three-pointer to stop the Claysburg run and then grabbing a rebound and putting it back up for a bucket to stretch the B-A lead to 20-15. Greiner hit a pair of short jumpers to give the Blue Devils a 24-18 lead at the half.
“I think that’s the way Claysburg played,” said Bellwood-Antis coach Tim Keech when questioned about how tight the contest was until the fourth quarter. “They haven’t won a game all year, but you certainly couldn’t tell by the way they played. They came out, they played extremely hard. In the first half, every time we made a move, they answered it and came right back. Honestly, I think to some extent, we were still a little bit high and excited after a huge victory here Wednesday night against Penns Valley to start the second cycle. You are dealing with 16,17, 18-year old kids, you never know what’s going through their minds. But to our credit we found a way to win, to make it look the game wasn’t really as close as what it was. It takes us to 2-0 in the second cycle and that’s all we really wanted.”
Greiner began the second half exactly as he had the first by draining a trey for a 27-18 Blue Devil lead, but Helsley and Weyandt combined to score three straight buckets to cut the Bellwood-Antis margin to 29-26. Paul Christner threw in a trey and McClellan added a basket and Tony DelGrosso hit a putback at the buzzer to expand the B-A lead to 36-29 with the fourth quarter left to play.
Bellwood-Antis made their move to put the game away by shutting Claysburg out and scoring nine points of their own to jump into a 45-29 advantage with the final quarter half gone.
Greiner began with a foul shot, Aaron Bell added a basket and McClellan hit both a trey and two-point shot. Kyle Nale scored on a three pointer and added a free throw, but Greiner scored the final seven points for the Blue Devils before Helsley set the final score with a trey shortly before time expired.
“What I thing the big difference was we got a couple turnovers and made some key shots,” explained Keech. “I think the fact of those shots going in gave everybody on the team some confidence and a few more people were willing to step up and look to shoot. Once we got the lead on them, we were actually able to relax a little bit. “
Greiner lead all scorers with 20 points and pulled down seven rebounds. McClellan was in double figures also with 11 points, Bell added six and Winterstein hit for five.
Weyandt led the Bulldogs with 10 points and Helsley added eight and Dehoff seven.
“We are going to have to be able to play that bullseye on our backs being 2-0 in the second cycle. Next week, I think, is going to be the biggest week that have ever had since I have been at Bellwood. We have four games, all on the road Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. We can’t take a night off. If we take a night off, it will have to be next Saturday to maybe get our breath back and get our feet back under us. We can come out of this 4-0, taking one game at a time, still undefeated in the second cycle. That’s what we are looking to do.”
The Bellwood-Antis junior varsity shelled the Claysburg Jayvees 48-23 to run their log to 8-2 on the season. Tyler Elvey pumped in 15 points to lead both teams and Corey DeArmitt added eight points for the hosts.
Anthony Musselman led the Claysburg-Kimmel junior varsity with seven points.
Bellwood-Antis 52 Claysburg-Kimmel 36
Claysburg-Kimmel – Helsley 3 0-0 8, Nale 1 1-3 4, Dehoff 3 0-1 7, Weyandt 5 0-0 10, Iachini 1 0-0 2, Sybert 1 1-1 3, Musselman 1 0-0 2. TOTALS 15 2-5 36.
Bellwood-Antis – McClellan 4 0-0 11, Bell 3 0-0 6, A. DeArmitt 1 0-0 3, Greiner 7 4-6 20, Blazier 0 0-0 0, Christner 1 0-0 3, Boone 0 0-0 0, Edmiston 1 0-0 2, DelGrosso 1 0-0 2, Gonzales 0 0-0 0, Wood 0 0-0 0, Winterstein 2 0-0 5, Hughes 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 19 4-6 52.
Score by Quarters
Claysburg-Kimmel 5 13 11 7 -36
Bellwood-Antis 11 13 12 16 -52
Three point goals: Claysburg-Kimmel 4 (Helsley 2, Dehoff 2).
Bellwood-Antis 7 (McClellan 3, Greiner 2, Christner 1, Winterstein 1).
