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BREWER – All in all, Saturday afternoon’s season-opening boys basketball game at Brewer High School couldn’t have worked out much better for Nokomis fans.
The Warriors of Newport got things off on a winning note by knocking off the Witches 72-57 and, as a bonus, former Warrior starter Frank Rapp, whose family moved to Brewer in the offseason, had a great game.
It looked like Rapp, who was cheered enthusiastically by the Nokomis faithful in the pregame introductions, would come back to haunt his former teammates early as he scored eight of his 14 points and pulled down nine of 13 rebounds in the first half.
“It wasn’t like a grudge match. They’re all still my friends,” Rapp said. “It was weird, but once I scored my first four points or so, I got into the game and totally forgot about me playing against them. It was just Brewer against Nokomis.”
Actually, it was more like Brewer against Jeff White, and the Witches could do little to slow down Nokomis’ 6-foot-2 junior swingman, who is also one of Rapp’s good friends. White burned the Witches for 35 points on 67 percent shooting from the field. And just for good measure, White also led the Warriors with 10 rebounds and five assists.
“In the past, I was known as a streak shooter, you know, a spot-up shooter coming off screens all the time… Shooting outside a lot, probably too much,” White said. “This year I really, really wanted to work on having an inside-outside game and being more versatile.”
White was a human ad campaign for versatility. draining shots off screens, hitting 20-foot jumpers with a defender in his face, driving the lane in traffic, and penetrating to the baseline off the dribble.
Whatever Brewer came up with, White was able to beat, in spite of a peripheral vision-impairing face guard he had to wear after breaking his nose in a freak play in practice last week.
“White and [Richie] Otis as a guard tandem are as good as any in the league,” said Brewer coach David Paul. “I was impressed.”
Otis managed 10 points despite 2-for-12 shooting and also came away with seven rebounds.
Brewer kept the game close most of the first half and took their first lead, 16-14 with 6:04 left in the second quarter, on an 8-0 run. But it was also Brewer’s last lead as the Warriors reeled off 11 unanswered points. The closest the Witches could get was seven points the rest of the game.
“I think the big thing was execution. We were much more efficient in the second half,” said Nokomis coach Jim DiFrederico. “And whenever they made a run, we were always able to answer with Jeff.”
The stats buttress DiFrederico’s efficiency theory: the Warriors took 52 shots from the field and shot 48 percent while Brewer, which took nine more shots, was a dismal 30 percent.
“Midway through the second quarter when it went from a six or seven-point lead to 15 for them, we kept firing off threes and taking bad shots,” Paul said. “It’s great if you make those, but if you don’t, it can get bad in a hurry.”
Brewer was paced by junior center Tim Hughes, who had 19 points, 14 rebounds, and two steals.
Warriors 72, Witches 57
Nokomis (1-0) Brewer (0-1)
Name G AG F AF TP Name G AG F AF TP
Henderson 3 8 2 2 10 Bicknell 0 2 0 0 0
Peters 0 0 0 0 0 Violette 1 8 1 2 4
Norris 0 0 0 0 0 Leighton 1 4 0 0 2
Otis 2 12 6 10 10 Sieber 2 8 4 5 9
Burgess 0 0 0 0 0 Killip 1 3 0 0 2
White 14 21 4 8 35 Snell 0 2 1 3 1
Morse 1 1 0 0 3 Johnson 1 4 0 0 2
Paige 0 0 0 0 0 Rapp 3 6 8 12 14
Tourgee 0 0 0 0 0 Dearborn 0 0 0 0 0
Driscoll 4 9 1 2 9 Vickery 0 4 0 0 0
Colby 0 0 2 2 2 Kimball 2 4 0 0 4
Williams 1 1 1 2 3 Hughes 7 16 3 4 19
Aucoin 0 0 0 0 0
Totals 25 52 16 26 72 Totals 18 61 17 26 57
Nokomis 14 37 52 72
Brewer 10 22 39 57
3-pt. goals: Nokomis (6-14): White 3-5, Henderson 2-4, Morse 1-1, Otis 0-2; Brewer (4-17): Hughes 2-6, Violette 1-4, Sieber 1-4, Leighton 0-1, Johnson 0-2
Attendance: 321
Preliminary: Brewer JVs 63-59
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