by Justin Joseph
The George W. Hewlett Varsity basketball team pulled away in the second half, to win 76-56 over Division High School at home Friday night.
Ryan Weiss for the Hewlett Bulldogs led the team in scoring on the night with 25 points in the game. He did much of the team’s scoring in the first half pouring in 14 points before the intermission to give his team the slim 36-32 lead heading into halftime. Weiss showed his complete arsenal, scoring in the lane through contact to pick up the bucket and additional points from the charity stripe, as well as sinking shots from deep. He would cut to the basket and his teammates would find him for easy layups in the interior of Division’s 2-3 zone defense.
In the second half, teammate Brett Karkus took over, knocking down back to back three-pointers to send the home crowd into a frenzy. He finished the evening with 19 points, as he looked in complete control of the team’s offense dictating their pace.
“We tell him to keep playing,” said head coach Bill Dubin after the game regarding Karkus’s hot shooting.
For Division, they couldn’t really get any rhythm going offensively. The entire night they only managed to hit two shots from deep, while the Bulldogs hit nine.
Alex Delacruz led Division in scoring with 17 points and teammate Justin Weinert put in 16 of his own.
The first quarter started off miserably for both teams as they each scored only 10 points in the first stanza. Both teams played good defense but they were also missing wide open shots. In the second quarter both teams would increase their offensive production as they topped 20 points each with Hewlett leading 36-32 heading into the break. In the second half Hewlett looked like a brand new team, playing together and moving the ball on offense, while communicating on defense. “I thought that we played a very nice second half, I thought that we had pretty good offense and we played enough defense to be successful,” Dubin said. “ I thought we passed the ball better in the second half and we found the open man better.”
Division didn’t have any answers for the Bulldogs ball movement once they got going in the second half. They stuck to playing zone the entire game and didn’t bother changing up their defense to combat the Bulldogs offense.
Division now moves to 3-4 on the season, while Hewlett improves to 3-4 on the year. We need to work on our defense more, that was too many points given up, but as long as we outscore the other team we will be alright,” Dubin said.
