BCT 2023: Malden pressures Bloomfield into faltering - eventually

BLOOMFIELD – One month into this varsity boys basketball season, Bloomfield had still yet to play a game in its historic venue. That pent-up excitement to take the court in front of a home crowd showed early in the Wildcats’ game on Tuesday with Malden, but exhilaration can only last so long against length, skill, and athleticism.

The Green Wave overtook the hosts in the opening round of the Bloomfield Christmas Tournament following a fast Bloomfield start and prevailed 67-46.

“Defensively,” first-year Bloomfield coach Ben Sindle said following his home-court debut, “we had a couple of mishaps, we didn’t communicate really well.”

That was surprising because the early indications of Sindle’s tenure are that – if anything – the Wildcats will defend well.

Bloomfield (4-4) jumped out to a 14-13 lead early in the second quarter, but the Green Wave (6-2) got offense from six different players to stretch their margin to 32-23 by halftime and were never really threatened again.

“Malden is a really good team,” Sindle said, ‘and they are athletic. They will pressure you, and that is a weak point (for us). But we’re getting better.”

The Wildcats entered Tuesday’s contest having allowed just 45.4 points per game by their opposition. That is over 10 points per game better than any Bloomfield squad over the past six seasons, all of which have been losing campaigns.

“Our kids are doing a better job of buying into the whole communication part of defense,” Sindle said.

That being said, Malden picked up the Wildcats for the length of the floor and it paid dividends.

Green Wave senior guard Quamareous Farmer put in seven of his 12 points, as Malden stretched its lead to 15 points early in the fourth quarter. And Malden’s offensive balance (five players scored in the final eight minutes, coupled with that stifling defensive pressure, was too much for the young Wildcats, who have just two seniors (Ayden Hutchison and Lucas Dowdy).

“We didn’t talk on defense,” Sindle said of stopping Malden offensively, “and we didn’t bring the intensity that I thought we should have.”

It was difficult to tell which Green Wave athlete to focus on, as a myriad of players scored in varying manners.

Malden senior Trey Miller paced his team with 13 points while senior forward Marcus Burton chipped in 11 points. In all, 10 Green Wave players produced offensively.

Dowdy led the Wildcats with 15 points while junior guard Matthew Sanders had 10 points and junior guard Caleb Upchurch had nine in the loss.

Bloomfield will play Bernie (4-4) today at 10 a.m. in a consolation quarterfinal.

Malden moves on to battle Dexter, which gave the Green Wave one of its two defeats this season (a 63-55 loss in Malden), today at 5:30 p.m. in a quarterfinal.

“Malden is going to come out and try to beat us since we beat them at their place,” Dexter coach Chad Allen said. “It is going to be a high-intensity game. We’re going to have to be well prepared and hopefully, we’ll handle that (defensive) pressure better.”