BELLVILLE — The Bellville High School boy’s basketball team hosted Columbus High School Dec. 16 at Brahmas Gym in Bellville and won by a final score of 40-39.
As Columbus led for most of the game, Bellville had a big third quarter and was able to close it out in the fourth quarter with clutch shot-making and big plays in the final seconds.
“We started making some shots,” said Bellville head boy’s basketball coach Jerry Brantly.
“First quarter, we missed a lot of shots. Second half we turned it around. Third quarter was big for us and we were able to carry it over to the fourth quarter.”
Bellville senior guard Dalvin Starks hit some really big shots in the second half, especially in the fourth quarter.
“When we were down, I was trying to score,” Starks said. “I saw the openings and came through in the second half.”
Columbus has a lot to be optimistic about heading into the rest of the season with the way they played in this game.
“We were trying to press a little more than we had in the past,” said Columbus head boy’s basketball coach Chris Carruthers. “We tried to push the tempo a little bit and that probably hurt us in the second half. We probably ran out of juice. They did a good job of handling our press and getting some easy buckets.”
Columbus had a 9-3 lead late in the first quar ter after two layups and a three-pointer, then an and one basket and a baseline jumper gave the Cardinals a 14-6 lead at the end of the third quarter.
Columbus kept a similar lead for most of the second quarter on a three-pointer and a few layups, which was followed by Bellville cutting the lead to five at halftime on a free throw from Don Gillum and a layup at the 1:20 mark to make it 23-18 at halftime in favor of Columbus.
Bellville continued to dwindle the Columbus lead down in the third quarter on a fast break layup from Hayden Toole about midway through the quarter to make it 26-24, which forced Columbus to call a timeout.
The Brahmas proceeded to tie the game at 28 on a basket and then took the lead at the end of the third quarter on a buzzer-beating layup from Toole to make it 34-30.
The Cardinals hit a three-pointer with 3:51 to go in the fourth quarter to regain the lead back at 3634, which led to both teams trading points for the rest of the quarter and Stark hit a big three-pointer at the 39 second mark for Bellville to take a 40-39 lead.
Adarius Hutchinson then grabbed a steal in the final seconds of the game for the Brahmas to close out a 40-39 win.
