Friday night’s action featured a Spring Branch ISD classic as the Stratford basketball team hosted Memorial. In a more than heated battle between cross-town rivals, the Spartans came out on top 55-44.

As many know, it does not take much for these two teams to get geared up for this match up. And tonight, it showed.

“What an emotional game,” Stratford coach Mitch Hornsby said. “I have been here for five years and I have never seen more emotion than tonight.”

One major key that Hornsby pointed out was how the Spartans were on the boards. In a previous contest, Memorial won that aspect of the game.

But Stratford had the edge on this night.

“I feel we held our own of the offensive and defensive boards,” Hornsby said. “Last time we played them, they did a better job than we did. We needed to make sure when they shot that they were one and done.”

Overall that seemed to be the case, but in the first three quarters it was quite even. Memorial managed to get a few second-chance shots. Leading the way for Memorial was forward Matt Staff who had 10 of his 15 points in the first half.

But coming into the game Stratford knew that Staff was the Mustangs’ go-to guy and the game plan was to try and keep the ball out of his hands as much as possible.

“Defensively we knew that Matt Staff was their best scorer and we wanted to do the best we could and limit his touches and his points,” Hornsby said. “I felt we did a pretty good job with that.”

With the defense and Spartan guard Blake Kelting’s three-point shooting, Stratford had a 19-16 advantage at half.

But the third quarter was what propelled the Spartans to a victory. They outscored Memorial 17-10, but they also had some adversity.

“We got in a lot of foul trouble early, especially in the third quarter with all the emotion,” Hornsby said. “The guys just sucked it up and showed the character of our team. I told them we got to beat them on the scoreboard and be smarter and not get caught up in the emotion. I knew it was going to be an emotional, physical battle.”

In the fourth, Memorial fought back and cut the lead to seven with less than five minutes remaining with Paul Driscoll leading the way. But Stratford managed to knock down several free throws and make baskets on transition to pull away the win.

SCORE LEADERS
S – Blake Kelting (17)
S – Sterling Dailey (9)
M – Paul Driscoll (18)
M – Matt Staff (15)
 

Subscribe to this comment's feed