ANSONIA – With a barrage of 3-pointers the Ansonia boys basketball team beat Randolph Southern 73-58 Tuesday night in Ansonia.
Ansonia hit 12 3-pointers on Tuesday, which helped set the pace for the Tigers and allowed them to play with the lead all night.
The Tigers’ first two 3-pointers came from Devyn Sink, who made a pair to put the home team up 6-0 early in the first quarter. Trevor Alexander and Brayden Swabb also hit 3-pointers early on to give Ansonia a 14-4 lead.
Randolph Southern started to get its offense going midway through the quarter and pulled within 3 points. Ansonia, aided by another Sink 3-pointer, was able to maintain its lead and led 21-16 at the end of the quarter.
Sink hit his fourth and fifth treys of the night early in the second quarter to put Ansonia up by double digits again. That was just the beginning of a strong second quarter for the Tigers, who outscored the Rebels 21-8 in the frame to go into halftime leading 42-24.
Ansonia coach Chad Cramer credited the Tigers’ defense with helping to get them going.
“We don’t usually press that much, but we wanted this to be an up-tempo game,” he said. “We didn’t want them to come down and run their ball screens and their backdoors where they’re running 40 seconds off a possession. We thought it was our best interest to kind of get this thing moving, and we did. And they scored a little bit in the first quarter, but the pace was so fast that that’s kind of where we wanted it. Then the second quarter we just kind of took off.”
Ansonia increased its lead early in the third quarter, going up by 21 points midway through the period. Randolph Southern was able to score the final 5 points of the quarter and made it a 52-36 game with eight minutes remaining.
Ansonia’s final 3-pointers of the night came early in the fourth quarter when Keith Burk drained two of them, increasing the lead to 21 points once again.
“He can shoot it,” Cramer said. “He really can. That’s what he does. He can shoot it as well as anyone else on the team. He’s been a great leader from the bench all year.”
Ansonia led by as many as 23 points in the fourth quarter before Randolph Southern made a run and closed to within 11, 64-53. The Tigers finished strong, though, winning by 15 points.
“I thought we moved the ball pretty well,” Cramer said of his team’s offense. “(Andrew) Rowland does a heck of a job setting screens down there at the right times. He’s smart. He does a good job. He sets the table out there. When he’s not out there our offense is not as good just because he does so much for us.”
Alexander led Ansonia with a game-high 21 points on Tuesday. Also for the Tigers, Sink scored 15 points, Hunter Muir scored 13, Swabb scored 7, Burk scored 6, Aydan Sanders scored 5, Rowland scored 4, and Matthew Shook scored 2.
Zack Jessee, Jaden Retter and Caleb Tomey led Randolph Southern with 10 points each. Kyler Bragg, Hunter Spain and Alex Wigginton each scored 8 points while Wyatt Davis scored 4.
Ansonia improved to 11-9 with Tuesday’s win while Randolph Southern fell to 3-15. Ansonia will return to action when it plays host to Riverside on Saturday, which will be senior night for the Tigers.
“They’ve been great,” Cramer said of his seniors. “We talk to them all the time … they’re not getting as much playing time as they want. They could be babies. They could pout. They could be a cancer to the team. They’ve been nothing like that. They have been the best teammates. They work their tails off in practice every day. I can’t say enough about kids like that. You talk about life lessons, those kids are learning them. I’m learning from them. I have nothing bad to say about any one of them.”
