WEST ALEXANDRIA —What has been a roller-coaster type of season for Twin Valley South’s boys’ basketball team continued last week as the Panthers rolled to a 68-52 win over Bradford to begin the week, but closed the week with a disappointing loss to Arcanum, 66-54.
Both were Cross County Conference games.
“(We) played very well for the first 28 minutes,” South coach Tony Augspurger said of the Bradford win. “Our high scoring combo of Willie Bowman and Travis Lovely both had outstanding games in only three quarters of action.”
Bowman was 8-for-11 and 4-of-5 on treys to finish with 20 points.
Lovely was 6-of-7 and 7-for-9 a the line and had 19 and 12 rebounds.
Augspurger said Jacob Wells “continued with the outstanding defensive work that he started against FM and took advantage of a greener light to have a mini 4th quarter, eight-point explosion, to finish with a career high of 13.”
For the second game in a row Panther point guard Ryan Bassler had zero turnovers and he notched six assists.
South led by more than 30 midway through the fourth quarter, 67-33, “when we were a little flat to end the game,” Augspurger said.
On Friday, South battled foul trouble in the loss.
“Friday night’s home game was much sloppier, foul filled and not nearly as happy of an ending for us,” Augspurger said. “We battled foul trouble all night long, especially Willie Bowman and Jacob Wells, and just couldn’t overcome that adversity. Arcanum shot the ball well and did a good job defending our sets.”
Augspurger said Bowman had another solid game.
“Willie was phenomenal shooting the ball again as he hit his first five jump shots, four of them treys to get us going. He led us with 18, but sat out much of the second half before fouling out with four minutes left,” Augspurger said.
Lovely had 14 points, 12 in the second half to try and keep South in the game. He again led the team in rebounds with nine.
“It was a frustrating night for us as we were hoping to stretch our winning streak to three and to get some momentum going into the tournament,” Augspurger said.
South (9-11, 7-5 CCC) was scheduled to play Carlisle on Tuesday, Feb. 13 and will host Dayton Christian on Saturday, Feb. 17 to close out the regular season.
Saturday is also Hall of Fame night.
The school will be inducting six people into the TVS/West Alex/Lanier Hall of Fame at halftime of the varsity basketball game.
Entering the hall will be for Academic: Richard Sweney, West Alex Class of 1963 and Amy Leedy, TVS Class of 1970: Service: John Keefe, West Alex Class of 1952 and Glen Mabry, retired TVS staff member and coach of multiple sports: Athletics: Tom Puvogle, TVS Class of 1977 and Steve Summers Sr., TVS Class of 1985.
