Bird Breaks Out to Lead Devils over Hurricanes
NORTH ADAMS, Mass — The talent Nolan Bird possesses has never been questioned. Nolan Bird Here are more photos |
It's his ability to use that talent in an assertive manner which has come a little slowly for him and the Drury boys' basketball team this year. In some ways, Bird is trying to catch up with his game, learning on the fly when exactly it's the right time to be selfish and take over the offense for his team.
It's not an easy lesson to learn, but playing in a big game against your arch rival can certainly help a player find his comfort zone quickly. That was the case for Bird, who stepped up in a big way for the Blue Devils in their matchup with Hoosac Valley on Tuesday night. The junior forward drained four 3-pointers on his way to a game-high 23 points to lead his team to a 54-35 win over the Hurricanes at Bucky Bullett Gymnasium.
"I think I started playing well at the beginning of the season but when I started missing shots, I started hesitating to shoot," Bird said when asked about the challenges of being Drury's go-to guy on offense. "Tonight, they started just dropping. After I get rolling, I just need to learn to keep shooting from here on out. I need to keep shooting the ball and not get frustrated,"
The only people frustrated on Tuesday night was the Hoosac defense, which never seemed to find an answer for the 6-3 swingman. Bird helped the Blue Devils, who improved their record to 7-5 thanks to a third straight win, to a 23-15 lead at the break by nailing three triples in the first half. He was even better in the second half, scoring in a variety of ways on his way to netting 14 points after halftime. His 14-point outburst in the final two quarters was just six points less than the Hurricanes (1-11) scored as a team in that same span.
"He played like a man tonight," Drury head coach Jack Racette said. "He really did. He had a mission, and he played like a man on both ends. He rebounds very well, but offensively he knocked down a couple of threes. He's just a tough matchup. If they play guards on him, we went right to the post with him early. We kind of took him away from the basket later, so then they have to adjust to how they guard him.
"I told him before the game that he has to be more assertive, that he has to take more shots. We want him to be the guy we're going to right now, and he definitely stepped up tonight and had a huge game."
In addition to his 23 points, which is a season-high for him this year, Bird also snagged seven rebounds with one assist and one block. He also remained pretty composed in game that marked the first time the Blue Devils beat their rivals to the south since Kevin Engwer helped Drury earn a season split on its home court back in the 2007-08 season. That's a span of over four years and eight games since the Devils have had something to brag about in this great rivalry.
"It's the rivalry, so I mean it always gets you fired up at the beginning," Bird said. "But you have to play with poise, not get to crazy and go 100 miles per hour. We played with our pace, and we tried to keep that going. They were laying off a little bit, and I started knocking down my shots. [In the second half], they started coming out on me, and that's when I started taking it to the hoop. I was shooting the ball well and driving the ball well, but it was just a good team win."
While Bird's offense clinched the win for the hosts, it was his team's defense that set the tone from the start of the game. Using an effective zone, Drury held Hoosac under 10 points in three out of the four quarters, including limiting the visitors to just six points each in both the second and third quarters. in its current three-game winning streak, the Blue Devils are allowing an average of 31 points per game.
"We haven't played zone leading up to tonight," Racette said. "We did a little bit of a 3-2 trap last week, but we really committed to not pressing. I like to press and get up and down the floor, but I think you need to change with your team. This team right now, we're doing a good job of really just defending the paint and keeping people out. I thought we did a great job on the boards. In the first half, they kind of beat us on the boards a little bit with that zone, but we talked about it halftime, and I thought we did a real good job of boxing out and just being solid defensively and not giving up easy baskets."
Four different players scored in the first quarter as the hosts built a 15-9 lead after one. A scary moment happened for Drury at the end of the first quarter, however, when a scramble for a loose ball on the floor resulted in senior forward Robert Jutras leaving the game with a cut on the bridge of his nose. Led by some strong play inside by junior forward Andrew Milesi, who had six points and five offensive rebounds in the first half, the 'Canes went on a 6-0 run to cut the Devils lead down to 20-15 at the end of the first half. With several substitutes in the game, things looked a little hairy for Drury until Bird hit his third triple of the half to give his team an eight-point lead heading into the locker room.
Racette's squad then busted the game open in the third quarter, outscoring Hoosac 16-6 in the frame. Jutras would return to the game with a bandage of the top of his nose, but it was Bird and senior guard Jake Tietgens who came up big in the third, scoring 11 of their team's 13 points in a 13-3 run that opened up a 19-point lead for the Blue Devils. Tietgens hit two big threes from the left corner in the quarter on his way to finishing with 12 points and five boards.
"We laugh about it at practice because if he's not in the corner, we tell him not to shoot it," Racette said of Tietgens' ability to knock down baseline threes. "He really doesn't like anywhere else on the floor, but he's knocked down a lot of big threes from that corner in the last couple of games."
On a night where a lot of their outside shots weren't falling, the Hurricanes had a hard time staying in the game with a full-court press that only forced 11 turnovers out of Drury. Hoosac head coach Bill Robinson said his team's struggles on defense can be directly tied in to their inability to score on offense.
"If you can't score on offense, it's pretty tough to always line up and play defense," Robinson said. "Bird hit a couple of big threes early, and I thought Tietgens hit some big threes from the corner. That's just gets them going, and we then have to play defense again. On the other end, we're not making anything, and we just have to rely on our defense. It's tough to win ball games like that. We have to score sometimes, but lot of that had to do with them. They shut us right down. They played to their strength and we fell right into it."
Hoosac didn't receive much production out of its usual suspects on offense. Sophomore point guard Matt Braman was held to just five points, half of his season average this year, while classmate Trevor Alibozek finished with 12 points, four of which came in the final minutes of the fourth quarter when the game was out of reach.
"We struggled moving the ball around the floor a little bit," Robinson said. "Everything's on the perimeter, so we have to figure out who wants to go inside a little bit. We might have found something late in the game with Trevor posting up, but obviously the game was out of hand at that point. There's not much you can do, but we might have found something there we can use for next time.
"We'll see."
Hoosac next hosts Sabis at 7 p.m. on Friday, while Drury plays at St. Joe's at the same time on the same night.