Eagles grab prelim win over Brewer

Tuesday evening in Oakland the Messalonskee Eagles won a prelim game over the Brewer Witches. The final score was Messalonskee 53 - Brewer 45. With the win , Messalonskee will face Lawrence for the third time in a quarter final game in Augusta. With the loss Brewer is done for the season.

This game got off to a pretty even start. Neither team was able to score on their first couple of possessions. Messalonskee scored first. Both teams had even scoring in the first quarter. Messalonskee led at the end of the first quarter by 1 at 10-9. Brewer had a good contingent of fans on hand and they also brought down their cheerleaders as well. I don't remember seeing a visiting team bringing their cheerleaders to another teams home court in a prelim game before. It helped give the game a tournament feel.

In the second quarter Messalonskee started to pull ahead. Dexter had a good quarter, scoring 8 points. In a bad turn for Brewer, Kenney picked up three fouls in a span of about 30 seconds and went to the bench with about 2 minutes to go in the quarter. This seemed to deflate Brewer a little bit. Messalonskee led at the end of the first half by 7 with the score being 24-17.

The third quarter was all Messalonskee. The Eagles outscored the Witches 17-7 in the quarter. Dexter scored 11 points in the quarter and Oliver had the other 6 points. Brewer was very cold shooting the ball and Messalonskee led by 17 at the end of the third quarter.

Going into the fourth quarter it appeared that the game was more or less over and all that Messalonskee had to do was score a few baskets to put the game out of reach. Messalonskee switched to a very deliberate offense that involved passing the ball around from a 4 corners type of set up and driving once in a while with the ball. It seemed the Eagles lost some of their offensive drive and started to turn the ball over. To compound things for Messalonskee, even though the Eagles had a big lead they kept fouling the Brewer players. At the 2:47 mark of the fourth quarter Brewer had reduced the lead to 9 points with the score being 43-34. Twenty seconds later the lead had dropped to seven with Messalonskee up 43-36. Brewer was able to close the gap to 6 at 45-39 with about 1 minute and a half to go, but that was as close as Brewer was able to get.

In the fourth quarter two Messalonskee player fouled out. Bridges fouled out with 4:57 left in the game. Deering fouled out with 2:47 left in the game. Both Oliver and Haiss ended the game with 4 fouls - and this was from a team that was leading by 17 at the end of three quarters. No one on Messalonskee had more then 2 fouls at the end of the first half. Fortunately for the Eagles, while the Witches hit on 12 of 15 free throws in the fourth quarter, Messalonskee hit on 8 of 10 free throws. Messalonskee ended up taking 11 free throws - all of them in the second half, while Brewer hit on 17 of 29 for the game.

1Q Messalonskee 10 - Brewer 9
2Q Messalonskee 24(14) - Brewer 17(8)
3Q Messalonskee 41(17) - Brewer 24(7)
4Q Messalonskee 53(12) - Brewer 45(21)

Messalonskee:

Perry - 4
Dexter - 23 (1 3ptr)
Bridges - 4
Oliver - 9
Haiss - 6
Deering - 6
Busque - 1


Brewer:

Adams - 4
Valley - 7
Jackson - 12
McLain - 11 (1 3ptr)
Kenney - 9
Alexsiewicz - 2

(Game Summary and commentary by David Jenney)