By Drew Terhall

DailyAdvocate.com

GREENVILLE — Arcanum head coach Kevin Brackman gets his first win as the Trojans’ varsity head coach as they won 68-33 at Greenville on Dec. 2.

Brackman said after not starting yesterday, the team was rearing to get out there and play.

“Not playing last night, we kind of had an itch. It was a slow end to our week. I told the guys, as silly as it sounds, I’m glad their wearing our laundry. They’re great kids,” Brackman said.

For Greenville, they start the season 0-2 after a loss at Tippecanoe. Head coach Matt Hamilton said there’s things that can be learned this early from the slow start.

“It’s two teams in a row where you look at and you know they’re doing the preparation in the offseason to put themselves in these positions that our guys need to learn to do,” Hamilton said.

Arcanum got the early lead and ran away with it. They led 42-15 at halftime. Senior Brady Lock had nine points and sophomore Regan Christ had eight points at halftime.

Everyone for Arcanum was making shots and grabbing rebounds. They never slowed down from their fast start.

Even with the bench players coming in at times, they kept up the intensity. Brackman said going in he didn’t know how deep his bench would be but they all played well.

There wasn’t a noticeable drop off in play with the bench players coming in for the Trojans. Brackman said most of the bench players he played were sophomores he coached last season as freshmen on the JV team. Having that familiarity already did help get the best out of everyone.

“I felt like for them to come over here in this atmosphere, some of those guys it was their first varsity action. I’m not sure you would have known it. They stepped up, they hit big shoots and we’ll see if we can ride the wave so to speak. See if we can carry this over into next weekend,” Brackman said.

All game long, Greenville showed flashes of great play. They were able to get some clean looks at the basket.

No matter how much they were down, the Green Wave continued to hustle for loose balls and still be physical. They just couldn’t play perfect to get themselves out of the hole they dug themselves.

In the second half, Arcanum continued to score off turnovers and hit shots. Brackman said the kids have put in the extra work on their shooting and it seemed to have paid off already.

“They spend a lot of time in the gym. I feel like I’ve told anyone who will listen, we open up the gym every morning at 6-6:15 a.m. I sit in a chair in the corner and those guys shoot for an hour and 20 minutes,” Brackman said. “It’s not Regan, it’s not Brady. There’s 24 of them. It’s most kids in our program.”

Christ led the Trojans with 15 points and Lock had 11. Junior Landon Flatter and sophomore Charlie Weiss had 10 points. Arcanum made nine threes in the game.

For Greenville, senior TJ Barr led the team with 10 points. Junior Drew Hamilton had eight points.

Hamilton said the team will have to focus on what they can control right now. Learn from these two games and move on.

“We knew we had guys playing positions they don’t normally play in. We have a lot of questions to answer. I just told them, the only thing to do is to get back to work. Shake it off, learn from it and keep working,” Hamilton said.

Greenville will travel to Butler next on Dec. 8 with tipoff at 7:30 p.m. Arcanum will try for their second win of the season as they host Ansonia on Dec. 8 with the JV starting at 6 p.m.

Contact Daily Advocate sports editor Drew Terhall at [email protected]