Men Mountaineers close out big conference weekend
Berea’s Men Basketball team went two for two this weekend at home. On Sunday, January 21st, the men would hold off conference opponent Averett University in a tough 80-76 victory at the Seabury Center. With the USA South conference tournament approaching next month Berea needed this win.
For this big game, Berea was without big scorers Travis-Hadyn Roe and Dakota Myers due to injuries. Although that did not stop Berea from opening up 10 point leads at different times of the game. It was especially hard to maintain with Averett having one of the top scorers in the USA South conference in James Contreras Jr. who would finish with 23 points. Berea’s Tyrique Miller would outscore Contreras with a game-high 24 points, 15 of those 24 points would come off of 3-pointers. Freshman guard Deandre Lightfoot found himself making a big impact in his first start on the season. Lightfoot was able to drop 17 points being the second leading scorer for Berea. The Mountaineers also found themselves coping with a major problem in their offense. Berea was able to settle down on their turnovers only allowing 13 today and forcing Averett to commit 16 turnovers. Berea forced 10 of those turnovers in the first half allowing them to leave the first half with 46-41 lead.
In the second half with less than 5 minutes to go the crowd would see Berea and Averett trading blows back to back to maintain the lead. There were also some controversial calls that really seemed to ignite the home crowd. Not only did Berea play like they wanted this win in the last 5 minutes. The fans cheered on viciously as if they were just as hungry for the victory as usual. I was able to catch up with Captain Dyonta “Bizzle” Brown after the game to talk about not having Travis and Dakota in the lineup. Bizzle stated “We know that we have to trust in each other and pick up their slack offensively. It makes us have to move the ball a bit more and it’s been working for the last couple of games.” Bizzle also spoke on the intensity in the last 5 minutes stating “We wanted to punch them in the mouth early and see where that leads us to. You could tell we got a little tired and they started to come back. We had to actually work for our shots that we had unlike last night and rely on our defense to keep the lead.”
Berea will play more conference basketball this upcoming Wednesday as they will head out to play at Maryville College at 7:30 PM.
