C2D3: Advance to have a BIG problem with Bears' post

BLOOMFIELD – Advance High School boy’s basketball coach Bubba Wheetley has been around a long time, so he didn’t need to watch Greenville play for long before he realized what dilemma the Bears would cause his team tonight.

“They’re so big,” Wheetley said of Greenville.

Really, what Wheetley meant to say was “HE is so big,” as in singular, not plural.

Advance (22-6) will face Greenville (22-1) at 6 p.m. in the MSHSAA Class 2 District 3 championship game at Bloomfield, and the Hornets have a BIG problem on their hands in dealing with Bear center Trey Porter.

“Porter had a good game,” Puxico coach Bryant Fernetti said following his team’s loss to the Bears in the semifinal on Wednesday. “He is one of the big reasons why they won.”

It isn’t Porter’s height, which makes him difficult to deal with. He is listed - very generously - at 6-foot-3. However, at (I’m guessing) 300 pounds (ish), Porter is a mountain of a kid to try and contain.

“He likes to get to his left shoulder (on moves),” Fernetti said, “and we let him get there too much.”

Porter averages just over 10 points per game but had 18 against the Indians, and 28 in a rout of Delta earlier this season.

“I wanted to try and front him more,” Fernetti said, “and we didn’t do a very good job of that.”

That is because “dancing” around a player on the block that is that strong and wide, is nearly impossible to do. And even if an Advance defender is able to do that tonight, doing so creates other issues.

“When you front him,” Fernetti explained, “it opens up the skip pass to (really good Greenville guard) Easton Evans. So, you kind of have to choose and our kids knew how good Evans is, so we were a little reluctant to help over as much.”

Not only is Porter’s size an issue for opposing defenses, but he has a surprisingly deft touch on his post moves.

“He has good hands,” Greenville coach Nathan Walk said of Porter. “He does a lot of good things for us.”

The Bears have the ability to hurt a team in so many ways. Walk utilized eight players in the win over Puxico and six scored. However, the possessions were centered on… well, the Bears’ center.

“I knew that he would be one of our keys,” Walk said of utilizing Porter on each possession. “We want to pound it inside and we were able to get it to him, and when we got it to him, he was able to put it in the hole.”

The Hornets won five consecutive District championships between the years of 2014 and 2018, while Greenville is seeking its first District title in program history.

Of the eight players that saw action for Greenville, four will return next year.

“All of our kids have played varsity since they were freshmen,” Walk said. “We had low numbers and I had to throw them into the fire. It wasn’t because they were necessarily good enough, they were needed bodies.

“It has paid dividends for us.”

Through the 2020-21 season, Greenville had only had three winning seasons over the previous 14 years. However, the Bears have now won 40 of their last 49 games.