Balanced Beulah ends New England's season
Rule No. 1 of playing the Beulah boys basketball team: Don’t let the Miners get a good lead. New England didn’t abide by that rule Monday night during the Region 7 tournament quarterfinals, and the Miners made them pay.By: Dustin Monke, The Dickinson Press
- Devin Plaggemeyer and Erik Ham
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Rule No. 1 of playing the Beulah boys basketball team: Don’t let the Miners get a good lead.
New England didn’t abide by that rule Monday night during the Region 7 tournament quarterfinals, and the Miners made them pay.
No. 8-ranked Beulah built a double-digit lead by the end of the first quarter and had an answer every time the Tigers tried to make a comeback to secure a 68-54 victory at Knights of Columbus Activities Center.
The Miners face rival Hazen at 7:30 p.m. today in the semifinals.
“It was kind of a take a blow, deliver a blow type of game,” Beulah junior Trevor Zacher said. “If you didn’t take one and give one back, you were going to get beat.”
Zacher had 18 points, six rebounds and five assists for the District 14 champion Miners (20-3), who let the Tigers sniff at making the game close only to snuff them out with quick baskets and big point swings.
New England cut the lead to 36-30 with 3 minutes, 53 seconds remaining in the third quarter but never came any closer.
The Tigers (16-6) cut the lead back to seven, 40-33, only to watch the Miners score five points in the final 45 seconds of the third quarter and tack on a Cody Nelson 3-pointer 20 seconds into the fourth to make it 48-33.
“That was important,” Beulah head coach Jeremy Brandt said. “Our kids kept in attack mode and didn’t say, ‘OK, let’s just try to run this out.’ We needed those points, the way they made shots.”
New England struggled against the length and depth of the Miners, who were The Hoopster basketball magazine’s preseason pick to win the Class B state championship.
The Tigers had 16 turnovers and had problems getting into an offensive flow until the middle of the second quarter. And even then, they had their troubles.
“We didn’t want to run with them, and maybe that was a mistake on my part,” New England head coach Luke Powers said. “We were in a half-court game a lot and we struggled working the ball inside. Length, their length definitely bothered us and they did a great job.”
The Tigers did do one thing well though — shoot 3-pointers. They were 9 of 19 from beyond the arc.
Senior Clarence Binstock hit four and led the Tigers with 16 points. Senior Kaine Hanson added a pair and finished with 13 points, eight rebounds, five assists and three steals. Junior Levi Hollinger had 11 points on three 3-pointers.
Beulah, as it has all season, thrived on balance with four scorers in double figures.
Nelson had 16 points and Tyler Murray had 10 points and seven rebounds for the Miners. Casey Duppong added 10 points, five rebounds and four assists. Jesse Hettich added eight points, five rebounds and four steals.
“That’s again, something that we need to do to be successful. We need to have good balance,” Brandt said. “That’s one thing we are capable of doing. It’s been pretty consistent for us throughout the year. Hopefully it’ll be the same tomorrow.”
The Miners shot 18 of 33 from the free-throw line, missing some early but hitting a bunch late when New England went into desperation mode. They were 10 of 15 from the line in the fourth quarter.
“We don’t have any regrets,” Powers said. “We talked all season about having no regrets and whether we played through the district tournament, through the regional tournament, made the state tournament, we talked about having no regrets. The kids left it all out there today. We just had some shots that didn’t fall.”
NE 6 21 33 54
Beulah 16 28 45 68
NE: Clarence Binstock 16, Kaine Hanson 13, Levi Hollinger 11, Nick Wolf 8, Devin Plaggemeyer 4, Paul Gardner 2.
B: Trevor Zacher 18, Cody Nelson 16, Casey Duppong 10, Tyler Murray 10, Jesse Hettich 8, Noah Iverson 6.
3-pointers: NE 9 (Binstock 4, Hollinger 3, Hanson 2), B 2 (Zacher, Nelson). Free throws: NE 11-17, B 18-33.
Total fouls: NE 22, B 15. Rebounds: NE 28 (Hanson 8, Plaggemeyer 8), B 37 (Murray 7). Assists: NE 14 (Hanson 5), B 15 (Zacher 5). Steals: NE 7 (Hanson 3), B 8 (Hettich 4). Blocks: NE 1 (Plaggemeyer), B 3 (Nelson, Iverson, Hettich). Turnovers: NE 16, B 9. Records: NE 16-6, B 20-3.
Tags: region 7 boys basketball tournament, high school basketball, new england tigers, beulah miners, sports, preps, basketball, updates
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