It was a strong start for Boyle County and a strong answer from Southwestern, but the Rebels did enough in the fourth quarter to come away with a region victory on Tuesday, 73-62.

Bryce Slone, Reese Smith and Jason Alexander combined for 57 points in the Rebels’ victory, their fifth straight and eighth of nine.

The Rebels were without center Will Bramel, and Southwestern used that to their advantage, doing most of their damage inside the arc.

“It’s that time of year when it’s tough because we’ve got to work to get better and we’ve got the district wrapped up,” Boyle head coach Steve Adams said. “Now’s when we really have to be disciplined and do things to get better. Everybody at school is sick, Will’s out. There’s a lot of things we’ve got to battle through here in the doldrums of the season.

“The teams that are mentally tough enough to battle through those are the teams that will be standing at the end. It wasn’t perfect but we did a nice job, the kids battled and we finished strong.”

Boyle opened in the first quarter with a 17-8 lead, with Slone and Smith combining for all 17 points.

The Rebels led 32-18 in the second quarter before Southwestern went on an 8-0 run to end the first half.

“In the first half there, we were up 14, and we quit executing,” Adams said. “We had silly turnovers or missed a bad shot and we weren’t getting on the offensive boards. We let them get back to six.”

The Rebels had nine turnovers in the first half but finished with just 14 in the game. The two teams went toe-to-toe in the third quarter, each scoring 18 points, but Boyle never relinquished the lead.

“I thought our kids did a great job defensively,” Adams said. “We’re limited right now with Big Will out, we’re awfully small. But we beat an awfully good team by 11, and I thought the kids did a great job of making big plays when we needed to.”

In the fourth quarter, Boyle’s offense scored 23 points to put the game away. Southwestern stayed in an aggressive man-to-man defense, and the Rebels responded: Boyle finished 25-for-41 (61 percent) from the field and 20-of-22 from the foul line.

“We don’t see that much, usually we get a couple backdoors and layups and the usually the teams get out of it, show zone and we get in the flow of that,” Adams said. “But it was nice to see a team that (played man-to-man) so we could work on some things. Going small like we are, we’re spreading the floor more to get some layups. You can see we’re a little rusty at it because we’ve had just one practice without Will. It’s tough but it will make us better in the long run because we’ll know how to play different ways at different times. When we get him back, we’ll be prepared for it.”

 

Box score

 

SOUTHWESTERN 8 18 18 18 — 62

At BOYLE COUNTY 17 15 18 23 — 73

 

Points

SOUTHWESTERN (14-11): Hunter Stevens 27, Jonathon Gallagher 17, Joe Floyd 11, Matthew Jones 2, Jalen Molden 2, Logan Dykes 2, Cole Dysinger 1.

BOYLE (15-5): Reese Smith 24, Bryce Slone 17, Jason Alexander 16, Caleb Jackson 9, Grant Hotchkiss 4, Jacob Lassiter 3.