It had been 18 days since the Owensboro Red Devils last had a game as they were forced to quarantine after their season-opening win over Butler County but despite the layoff, OHS battled Bosse Friday and almost pulled off a 23-point comeback in front of the limited crowd.
The Red Devils trailed 56-33 in the third quarter but roared back and cut it to five but the Bosse Bulldogs were too much for OHS as they took the game 74-62.
Owensboro coach Rod Drake said he prefered to play a team like Bosse in their first game back after the long layoff.
“This is a good teaching moment for us,” he said. “We’ve been practicing against each other for the last week and you practice how you play. That’s what I told some of those guys, you get in practice, you play against certain people, you look good then you get in ballgames. They beat us in all phases of the game, I think they were just a little tougher than we were. They killed us on the boards. For the second ballgame of the year against a quality opponent like this, I thought we played a decent game.”
From the opening coin flip, the game moved quickly as neither team wasted much time getting up and down the floor.
Owensboro held a small lead in the first quarter but Bosse showed why they were No. 4 in their class in Indiana.
“They got the ball up the floor in 10-15 seconds, they were shooting layups,” Drake said. “That’s the way we like to play but they were 9-0, we were 1-0. Overall, we’ve just got to get better. Thank God we got to play tonight.”
Bosse led 37-26 at the break and looked to have the game in hand as they stretched the lead to 56-33 with 3:49 left in the third but the Red Devils weren’t ready to roll over just yet.
Amari Robinson-Wales, Chris Glover, Kenyata Carbon and Devonte McCampbell all had multiple buckets in the quarter for OHS as they cut the deficit to five just inside the start of the fourth quarter.
“We’ve got to learn to play 32 minutes,” Drake said. “We start off and we score easy, we did it against Butler County, then we go to chill mode. They hit us in the mouth and it’s like ‘Oh boy.’ That’s what happens. We came out in that third quarter and we were ready to play.”
Five was as close as the Red Devils would get as Bosse outscored them 18-13 in the final frame.
Drake said he thought the Red Devils’ pressure got to the Bulldogs during the second half, which led to their comeback.
“I think they got tired,” he said. “We played a lot of people that quarter. I think they got tired and we just couldn’t convert. We had them taking shots we wanted to but then they get a rebound or we foul the shooter.”
Drake said the Bulldogs were the better team Friday but Owensboro will hope it’s the better team today when they play their first road game at Henderson County.
Bosse 74, Owensboro 62
BHS (10-0) 23 14 19 18–74
OHS (1-1) 16 10 23 13–62
BHS: Ajibade 9, Wagner 21, Norris 17, Nunn 11, Burton 16
OHS: Amari Robinson-Wales 18, Kenyata Carbon 16, Chris Glover 12, Trey Hinton 2, Ethan Pendleton 6, Devonte McCampbell 8
2021 basketball coverage is presented in part by Rhoads & Rhoads Attorneys at Law.
