By Nicholas Kolsin
The Braves Men’s Basketball team won the Conference Carolinas basketball tournament in a dominating 107-91 win over Emmanuel College in Spartanburg.
Dallas Gardner had the game of his career not missing a single shot scoring 34 points, including 9-9 from the field and 14-14 from the free throw line. Bradlee Haskell scored 20 points and had 3 assists. JuJuan Carr had 12 points and 8 assists. For his play over the entire tournament, Carr won the tournament MVP.
Coach Drew Richards talked about the teams confidence and how that lead to the teams success in the press conference after the game saying “I was proud of our guys. In a moment like that in a championship game to come out with the confidence we did.” He would go on to say “I thought our swagger if you will on both ends of the floor multiplied and it got us the momentum”
The Braves won this game off of the backs of their impressive three point shooting to start the game. In the first half the Braves shot an impressive 77% from three (10-13) which gave the Braves the important 15 point lead going into the halftime break. Josh Berenbaum off the bench was a catalyst for this as he hit four threes in the half, finishing the game with 14 points.
In the second half, while the three point shooting cooled down, the Braves were able to drive and attack the basket at will, which got them to the free throw line 26 times, making 22 of them.
For Emmanuel, the Braves could not stop forward Tavarus Webb, as he collected 44 points and 8 rebounds on the night. He also shot 13-17 from the free throw line getting some of the Braves into foul trouble. Kendall Latney was another Lion that gave the Braves a problem on the night, as he scored 29 points with five boards and five assists.
The win moved the Braves on to the NCAA Tournament round of 64 where they would travel to Colombus State in Georgia.