Leesville Road basketball teams sweep Broughton boys and girls
Leesville Road’s boys and girls basketball teams defeated Broughton in similar ways Tuesday night in Cap-8 Conference action: get a big lead and fight off the home Capitals late.
The Pride’s girls were up big before Broughton made it interesting in the fourth, but Leesville won 42-30.
In the boys’ game, Broughton didn’t take its first lead until less than a minute left in regulation. Leesville won in overtime 66-58.
GIRLS
Broughton led 8-5 after the first quarter but Leesville Road clamped down in the second and third quarters for a 21-10 halftime lead and 33-14 going into the fourth quarter.
The Caps battled back in the fourth, scoring more points in the last quarter (16) than the first three combined (14).
“We battle real hard, we play hard, we don’t always play smart,” Broughton coach Mikeal Loutzenheiser said. “We tend to have peaks and valleys in games. We’ve got to find a way to work through adversity without imploding. ... It’s something we’re working on hopefully we continue to get better at it.”
Leesville Road’s Shea Plocharczyk (nine points) and Ashley Gill (eight points) led the way.
“I actually don’t feel like we played our best defense. I know it looked like it, but (Broughton) just had a tough night shooting the ball,” Pride coach Ben Daniels said. “I’m not going to say it was a bad performance, any time you hold a team to 30 points you should be OK, but I feel like we can do better.”
Broughton was led by Marcy Waters’ 11 points and also got seven points from Keona Jasper and six from Jada Smith.
BOYS
Broughton fell behind before the game even started after being assessed a technical foul for dunking in warmups, but the Caps took its first lead of the game, 54-52 with 53.3 seconds to go. Leesville tied it up with 24 seconds left and Broughton was unable to get a shot off before overtime.
“There’s a lot of pluses to take from this. (Leesville) is a veteran team in a lot of ways,” Broughton coach Jeff Ferrell said. “It was great to see our team battle and battle and not give up until the bitter end. I will say I think that we really, really thought we were going to win that in regulation and we didn’t, and that was kind of a downer for us, and that kind of spilled over.”
In overtime, Leesville center R.J. Wilson keyed the Pride to a win, scoring inside and grabbing offensive rebounds.
“I had to get locked in,” Wilson said. “I have to help my team get boards, because I’m the biggest thing out there.”
Leesville coach Russ Frazier got a great performance from his guards – Jalen Benjamin, Alex Hunter and D.J. Hunter.
“I’m proud of my boys’ effort to gut it out and win on the road,” Frazier said. “I love the group I have. They’re a great basketball team, could be a really special basketball team, but they’re better people. I enjoy their company more than the basketball part, they’re great kids.”
This story was originally published December 13, 2016 at 11:12 PM with the headline "Leesville Road basketball teams sweep Broughton boys and girls."