FORT WAYNE – The shot of the night Tuesday came from Zach Terrell, a three-quarter-court bomb that beat the halftime buzzer and sent the visiting Homestead Spartans off with the first real momentum they’d seen all night.
But Bryson Scott, and the Northrop Bruins, had already signed their names to the evening by then.
Six minutes into the first quarter, Scott, the Bruins’ standout junior guard, spun down the baseline, rose and crashed a thunderous dunk over a Homestead defender, then lifted his head and screamed at the sky. The bucket and free throw pushed Northrop in front by six on the way to a seven-point after a quarter, but more importantly, it indicated just whose night this was going to be as the Class 4A No. 9 Bruins rolled over No. 5 Homestead, 72-60.
It was Homestead’s second loss in four days after winning its first 19 games, and it was wire-to-wire. The Bruins scored eight of the first 10 points, and Homestead never got even again as Scott lit up the Spartans for 34 points in what might have been Northrop’s most best overall effort of the season.
Opinions varied.
“Yeah, that’s the best team ball we’ve played all year,” Scott said when it was done.
“No, I felt like we lost our focus a little bit in the fourth quarter,” said his coach, Barak Coolman.
What they did agree on was that the Bruins were stoked for this one. And no one was more stoked than Scott, who scored 20 of his 34 in the second half as Homestead ran a succession of defenders at him to little effect.
The Bruins outscored Homestead 6-0 across the last 2:52 of the first quarter to open a 14-7 lead after one, then ran the lead to as many as 12 points in the second quarter before Terrell’s intercontinental three shaved it to 32-23 at halftime.
A 12-5 run to close out the third sent Northrop to the final quarter with a 52-37 lead, and it expanded to 55-37 before Terrell and Nick Gamble – who scored 26 of their combined 40 in the second half – led a late surge for Homestead to keep it respectable.
But it wasn’t enough to offset miserable first half in which the Spartans turned the ball over 10 times and shot just 9 of 23. And it wasn’t enough to offset a Northrop that played players and got points out of all of them but two.
“Homestead’s not going to quit,” Coolman said.
“They’ve got guys with great character that play extremely hard. (But) we go 10 deep, and I think that was a key. We always get some scorers off the bench, and we kept some fresh legs in there to kind of wear Homestead out, too.”