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Broncos take lead in third, never look back
By Andrew Snyder, Staff Writer
A week after the McKinney High football squad saw its opening playoff game take a turn for the worse midway through, a different school in a different sport saw something similar, to an opposite result. With basketball now fully in charge of Friday night, a 30-point third quarter saw McKinney Boyd overcome a halftime deficit and defeat Greenhill, 69-67.
Leading the charge was junior Zach Parr and senior Jeff Blackmon, who rallied the Broncos with 15 points worth of three-point shots in the third to overtake the lead and give teammates the spark needed to hold on.
Par was Boyd’s top scorer at 23 points.
Blackmon, who finished with 12 points, gave a defensive boost by covering Hornets star Asad Meghani. While he didn’t slow down the pace of the game’s lead scorer, who closed out with almost half his team’s total at 32 points, Blackmon made it difficult for Meghani to distribute the ball and find an avenue of attack outside himself. Of Greenhill’s 28 second half points, he scored 19; an impressive stat, but not one to win this game by.
A completely different scenario played out in the first two quarters, with Boyd behind 39-29 and Meghani ruling the court alongside teammate Kevin Phillips. At the end of the second, the former had 13 points and the latter 12.
“They came out and executed their high-picking roll screens well,” Galyon said. “The things we worked out in practice, with the post players helping to defend that, weren’t happening. The kids just didn’t execute what we wanted them to defensively, and we gave up too much dribble penetration. We let [Meghani] and [Phillips] pick us apart. They were getting layups or just getting pull-up jump shots, because no one was there to contest them.”
Phillips wouldn’t score again after halftime.
“Defensively the switches we made and the changes in how we were running really helped out a lot,” Galyon said.
And Boyd didn’t relinquish the advantage taking in the third quarter, where it held the Hornets to just 13 points. The final moments of the game saw it come close, with Greenhill inching just a point behind at 68-67 with 27 seconds to go, but the opposition’s attempts to feed the ball to Meghani were disrupted by a judicious steal from Broncos junior guard Correy Pierre. That led to Parr being fouled and taking two from the foul-line, making one and turning to watch a desperation shot from Greenhill bounce away.
“We really stressed to the kids about pushing the ball, making their big kids have to run up and down the floor,” Galyon said. “We noticed late in the second quarter they were starting to get tired. They didn’t have as much stamina there, and we really wanted to keep the tempo going. I think that played out going into the third quarter especially, because I think they were still a little bit gassed.”
Combined with the Broncos season-opening win over Denton, Friday’s victory gave them a perfect record, 2-0, in the dawn of the pre-district season. While not a margin to judge the rest of the year by, it’s been some time since Boyd has gotten off to a similarly promising start.
“Right now, where these kids have come from and where they’re at it’s just fabulous to see them win,” Galyon said. “I know they’re excited about it. The group of guys we have here, they’ve never been 2-0 at the varsity level, and that’s something we haven’t done since our very first year that Boyd opened. But for them to battle back and find a way to win, that’s huge.”
Boyd scoring wrap
Alex Coffin 9, Cameron Doyle 8, Pierre 6, Jon'Tray Lynch 5, Kenbea Walker 4, Dwayne Brooks 2
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