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Pleas, Leopards hold off Quakers
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Liberty’s Asim Pleas (4) shoots over Salem’s Max Wolfgang during a game Tuesday in Liberty. Pleas scored 30 points, leading the Leopards over the Quakers, 73-67.
LIBERTY
Asim Pleas scored 30 points by cutting and weaving to the basket to help the Liberty High boys basketball team when Salem shaved its deficit to three near the end.
Dan Markulin’s six points and six rebounds were just as hard-earned against a brawny Max Wolfgang as the Leopards escaped with a 73-67 win Tuesday night.
Liberty (7-4) was hoping that a margin of victory by more than a hair would have been a reality, but the Quakers (4-7) were on the Leopards’ tails throughout and made the home team sweat until the final seconds.
The 6-foot-4 Markulin had to deal with the 6-6 Wolfgang.
“He’s a good player and you have to watch how you play him because he goes into [to draw] the fouls, so you have to box him out and get low with him,” Markulin said. “If not, he could rack up the offensive rebounds.”
Wolfgang was successful in pulling down 15 of Salem’s 30 rebounds, but Markulin was also successful, in part, for putting the large Quaker on the bench in the fourth quarter with four fouls.
“I expected a battle from them because they have a big kid who is hard to deal with,” Liberty coach Dan Bubon said of Wolfgang.
But Bubon also thought that the Quakers were better off after Wolfgang incurred his fourth foul with 6:28 remaining.
“They had to chase us a little bit when we had the lead, so they would have wanted to get him out [of the game] a little bit anyway,” Bubon said. “We wanted to spread them out and get to the basket and we were able to do that.”
Lynn Bowden and Cameron Clark added 15 points apiece for Liberty, which watched Salem pull within 68-65 when Wolfgang scored with 1:16 to go.
“They also made a lot of 3s and a high percentage of foul shots,” Bubon said of the visitors, who were 8 of 19 from 3-point range and 15 of 21 at the foul line.
Liberty shot better overall — 28 of 45 from the field to Salem’s 22 of 54 — and had three fewer turnovers (12 to 15). The Leopards were 16 of 33 at the foul line. Bowden topped Liberty’s rebounding with seven.
Bubon gushed over Pleas.
“Offensively, we have a kid who can score from anywhere, inside or outside, which is rare,” he said. “So, he creates for others and gets himself shots. Defensively, we’re normally a very good man-to-man team. I think switching up tonight took us out of our rhythm a bit. We got confused and weren’t sure which defenses we were in, but that’s my fault.”
D.J. Pullie led Salem with 22 points, while Wolfgang had 14 and Ryan Hoover 13.
While acknowledging Pleas’ talent, Salem coach Rich Hart thought that the Liberty standout player got a break in his ball-handling style.
“It’s hard to guard somebody like that,” Hart said of his game-long complaint that Pleas’ ball-handling involved carrying it.
On the flipside, Hart didn’t agree with his team’s play, either.
“We’ve got to take care of the basketball. We made too many unforced turnovers and made too many bad decisions. I was happy that we played hard, as hard as we could, but we just didn’t play smart.”
Of his guards getting rattled by Liberty’s smothering defense, he said, “That can’t happen. We tied it up [41-41], then made two bad decisions. We had two turnovers and tried to go one-on-one. We need to move the basketball and reverse the ball and play smart. We sort of played into their style. They did a nice job and hit some tough shots. The main thing is that we’ve got to give ourselves opportunities to score. We didn’t get the ball inside to Max enough.”