Visiting Comets pummel Bruins
MILLS 60, PULASKI ACADEMY 46
Mills looked much more comfortable Tuesday night at a place that hasn’t been kind to the Comets in years past.
Tre Long’s 16 points led a balanced scoring effort for the Comets, who shook off a dismal start to run past Pulaski Academy 60-46 at Alex Hugg Gymnasium.
Long knocked down 3 three-pointers for the Comets (6-6, 1-0 4A-5), who won for the fifth time in their last six games. But more importantly for Mills, it picked up a rare decisive victory inside the Bruins’ building to open up conference play.
Last season, Pulaski Academy (2-7, 0-1) thoroughly whipped the Comets 60-40 at home. And two years ago, Mills trailed big early before rallying for a 65-61 win.
“Even when we’ve had our best teams, we’ve struggled over here,” Mills Coach Raymond Cooper said. “PA’s a tough team to play against, especially at home. They’re smart, they’ve got a style that’s difficult to play against and a defense that’s tough because you don’t see it a lot.
“So any time you can come in here and just get a win of any kind, it’s big.”
Mills had six players score at least seven points. Q.J. King had 10 points, 7 assists and 6 rebounds, while Allen Dixon and Zaylin Rowland had 8 points apiece. Jabrae Shaw also did a little bit of everything for the Comets, finishing with 7 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals.
Kel Busby hit five three-pointers and notched a game-high 19 points for the Bruins, who jumped out to a nine-point lead in the first quarter and led 13-9 in the second before unraveling.
Pulaski Academy began having trouble with Mills’ press, which led directly to a rash of turnovers. The Bruins threw the ball away 10 times in the quarter, leading to 14 Comet points. Mills, which missed nine of its first 10 shots, trailed 15-14 until a three-pointer from Long at the 3:58 mark started a quarter-closing 20-3 run.
“For me, I’m really looking for growth from gameto-game,” Cooper explained. “We’re young and have had a lot of changes in lineups. So we’re trying to figure out who we are, and we know we’re going to have those rough patches, like the one we had in the first quarter.
“But we’re getting better every week. We’ve going to have some parts where we look really bad, and then there’s times where it’ll look like we’ve got things figured out.”
The Comets extended their lead to 41-18 with 6:22 left in the third quarter on a three-pointer from Rowland, but the Bruins continued to battle.
Pulaski Academy eventually trimmed the deficit to 52-37 with a little less than seven minutes to go in the fourth following a short bucket inside from Ben Smiley, but Shaw and King scored on consecutive possessions to re-establish a substantial cushion for Mills.
“The one thing my guys have learned to do is compete,” said Cooper, who was missing several key regulars because of various injuries. “Right now, that’s all I can ask of them. They’ll learn over time with experience. And of course, there’s only one way to get that, and that’s to get out there and play.
“For the most part, they’ve done that. At the beginning of the year, Q.J. would score 65% of our points, and other teams started to figure that out. But I challenged other guys to step up and score. Tre is shooting it well, and others are getting confident. Now, Q.J. is starting to trust them more, too, so we’re getting there.”
The Comets finished 25 of 48 (52.1%) from the field and committed seven turnovers, including two in the first half. Pulaski Academy, which got 11 points from Tyson McCarroll and eight points from Smiley, hit 16 of 41 (39%) shots and had 17 turnovers.