Brown County spoils T-Birds home debut

Eastern Greene's J.T. Yoho (34) goes for a layup against Brown County Friday night at Little Cincinnati as members of both teams watch. The Eagles defeated the Thunderbirds 52-35. (By Rick Curl/Greene County Daily World.) [Order this photo]

Through three games -- all on the road -- the T-Birds had scored no less than 51 points, had given up an average of 53 points per game and had three starters averaging in double figure scoring.

All of that turned out to be little more than window dressing following a visit from the Brown County Eagles on Friday night.

Eastern Greene's Andy Igel tries to make his way through a Brown County defender for a layup Friday night at Little Cincinnati. [Order this photo]

Senior guard Bailey Howard led a trio of Eagles into double figures to spoil Eastern Greene's home opener 52-35.

"Give them credit, that's a very, very good basketball team," Igel said. "They're a very quick team at every spot and they're very athletic at every spot and we didn't respond very well to that."

The Eagles managed to almost fully contain the Thunderbirds' scoring trio of Davis Russell (16.7 ppg), J.T. Yoho (14.3) and Zack Johnson (11.7).

Russell and Johnson were held to just eight points each to lead the Thunderbirds, while Yoho finished with four.

Just to add insult to injury, the Eagles were also able to limit Eastern Greene's rebounding to just 14 -- with no player pulling down more than the four each collected by Yoho and Johnson.

All-in-all it was a dismal performance according to Igel -- and one he hopes won't be repeated anytime soon.

"Are they this much better than us? I don't buy that at all," Igel said. "We're going to get a test tomorrow (against North Knox) to see if we can bounce back after adversity like this because we didn't look very good tonight."

While the Eagles were busy hitting 50 percent (21-42) from the floor, the Thunderbirds were struggling in nearly all offensive aspects of the game.

They turned the ball over just 13 times, but it was what they didn't do when they did hang onto the basketball that turned out to be their downfall.

"They've got pretty good shooters and we covered those shooters pretty well," Brown County Coach Roger Fleetwood said. "They didn't shoot the ball well and we defended them pretty early well ... and then went to a 2-3 zone and even when they had some looks, they missed them."

As a team they shot just 28 percent as a team connecting on a dozen baskets in the same number of attempts.

"We fell in love with the jump shot and we didn't offensive rebound," Igel said. "We didn't create easy opportunities, we didn't transfer a turnover into points, we went down and made mistakes -- even though it might have been our best defensive effort of the year."

That combined with a first half scoring drought of just over seven minutes that spilled between the first two stanzas, was all the Eagles needed to run their record to 4-1.

"It was a good win on the road," Fleetwood said. "We came out and established the game right from the beginning and it was our game from beginning to end."

During that fatal time span, Brown County turned a 7-6 Eastern Greene lead into a 12-point advantage. An advantage that never dipped below 10 points the rest of the night.

"The tough part of it was that we had good shots," Igel said referring to the first half shooting slump. "We had good shots that wouldn't go in.

"The disappointing thing for me wasn't that we missed those shots, it's that we never got ourselves offensively going where we needed to be going."

Brown County opened the scoring with an inside bucket from Caleb Wedan ahead of a trey from EG's Davis Russell that gave the T-Birds the first of their two leads.

The second came at the 4:08 mark when Russell found the bottom of the basket again -- and the seven minutes of agony for Igel began.

Brown County pushed the gap to 15-7 at the first stop, 30-19 at the half and 45-28 after three quarters.

"You've got 24 hours until you come back out here and play, so if you're not and you're still dragging your head and still wondering why things did go the way they did, you're going to get beat tomorrow night," Igel said when asked if Friday's game was one to leave behind. "North Knox is going to come in here and scrap and play hard.

"They're better than they were a year ago, and if we think we're just going to show up and win, we're going to get beat."

Tonight's game is slated for a 6 p.m. start.

Eastern Greene won the junior varsity contest 48-23 behind 18 points from Nathan Cobine, seven from Jake Hash, six from Blake Crowe, five from Logan Frye and two each from Kurtis Stille and Zak Eckerle.

BROWN COUNTY (52) -- Bailey Howard 5-12 3-3 15, Kirk Graber 0-2 2-2 2, Garrett Davis 5-10 2-2 12, James Allen 6-9 0-0 12, Caleb Wedan 3-6 0-0 6, Jordan Rose 1-2 0-0 2, Blake Ferry 1-1 0-0 3. Totals 21-42 7-7 52.

EASTERN GREENE (35) -- Tyler Igel 2-6 2-2 7, Davis Russell 3-11 1-6 8, J.T. Yoho 1-7 2-3 4, Zack Johnson 3-9 2-3 8, Zach Ingram 1-4 0-1 2, Sam Jacob 0-0 0-0 0, Cody Sparks 2-4 0-0 6, Miles Hutchison 0-0 0-0 0, Logan Hash 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 12-42 7-15 35.

Brown County 15 15 15 7 -- 52

Eastern Greene 7 12 9 7 -- 35

3-point shooting -- Brown County 3-9 (Howard 2-6, Ferry 1-1, Graber 0-1, Davis 0-1), Eastern Greene 4-14 (Sparks 2-3, Igel 1-2, Russell 1-6, Yoho 0-2, Hash 0-1). Total fouls -- Brown County 17, Eastern Greene 12. Fouled out --none. Technical fouls -- Davis, unsportsmanlike conduct. Rebounds -- Brown County 27 (Allen 11), Eastern Greene 14 (Yoho 4, Johnson 4). Steals -- Brown County 6 (Allen 3), Eastern Greene 5 (Russell, Johnson, Sparks, Ingram, Hutchison). Turnovers -- Brown County 11, Eastern Greene 13.