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Liberty turns up heat to avenge Brookfield loss
BROOKFIELD
After the Brookfield High boys basketball team sliced Liberty’s 10-point lead to pull within two points, the Leopards responded with pressure.
The Leopards resorted to a final round of pressure to take control of the final three minutes to prevail, 57-45, in Friday’s All-American Conference Blue Tier game.
Sophomore Dra Rushton had 11 points, six steals and five assists, while Andre Bowers and Ja’Shaun Whitman had 11 points apiece for the Leopards (4-9, 4-4).
Brian Hiner and Marc Kraml had 15 and 14 points, respectively, for Brookfield (5-6, 3-5).
“Just about every team in the league is up and down, but we’re sort of on a downturn right now,” said Brookfield’s Bill Kovach, a fourth-year coach. “We won three in a row and have now lost three in a row.
“We’re using this as an experience for the tournament,” Kovach said. “Every team we play — quick teams, big teams — we’re trying to learn from the games because we have a lot of younger guys playing for the first time and they’re doing a pretty good job for us.”
The victory avenged a 53-52 double-overtime loss to Brookfield in December.
Liberty made 21 of 46 field goals and 13 of 17 free throws while Brookfield was 16 of 44 from the field and nine of 13 at the line. However, Brookfield committed 19 turnovers, half of which accounted for 16 Liberty points.
Brookfield reeled off the game’s first 10 points before the Leopards finally got on the board after six minutes and 20 seconds had elapsed. Credit Whitman’s three-point goal at 1:40 of the first quarter for the shutout-snapping basket.
Liberty got hot in the middle quarters when it outscored the homecourt Warriors, 31-14.
When ahead by 10 going into the fourth quarter, 38-28, Liberty coach Dan Bubon wanted to exploit Brookfield, but it nearly backfired.
“We wanted to spread them out,” Bubon said. “We thought that if they had to come out and chase us that we’d get some driving lanes to the basket and they’d have to foul us.
“After we turned it over a couple times, we finally settled into what we wanted to do.”
Bubon is fond of calling games such as Friday’s “coin-flip games” because local teams are so evenly matched.
“We made a great run in the second quarter, but then they made a great run at us. In the fourth, I honestly wanted to get out of the pressure because I thought it would give them chances to score, but when we got out of the pressure, it’s like we got lazy.
“So when they cut it to 46-44, I said, ‘Let’s go back to the pressure because it was working earlier’ and it caused turnovers and we started a run again. It was probably dumb on my part to play it safe with what I did.”
Daniel Banks, who committed his fourth foul at 2:30 of the third quarter, still got more playing time before finishing with 10 points.
“It didn’t bother me because he was being aggressive and bodies are going to bump into each other,” Bubon said. “When we play aggressive, there are going to be fouls sometimes.”
Bowers, a 5-10 junior, had eight of Liberty’s 26 rebounds and Kraml, a 5-11 senior, and Hiner, a 6-1 junior, both had seven of Brookfield’s 27 rebounds.