Same ol’ Newby
Junior guard Donovan Newby’s 3-pointer powers Bloom to easy win over Rich East
The 3-pointer that junior guard Donovan Newby hit for Bloom early in the second quarter Friday against Rich East served a couple of purposes.
For one thing, it gave the Blazing Trojans their first lead of the game.
For another, it awakened a giant.
“Yeah, that three opened things up for me,” Newby said. “It was a confidence booster because I had missedmy first couple of shots.”
He didn’tmissmany the rest of the night in Bloom’s 72-57 Southland victory.
Newby scored 24 points for the Blazing Trojans (15-1, 3-0). Keshawn Williams added 13, while Emani Burgess contributed nine points and 10 rebounds.
Lewis Harper scored 14 points for Rich East (7-6, 2-1). Karl Polk Jr. had nine points and nine rebounds.
Newby shook Bloom out of a major stupor at the start of the game.
He hit the 3-pointer with 6:01 left in the second quarter to put the Blazing Trojans on top 15-12. Before that, they had shot 2for-18.
“All of our guys work really hard, but they know sometimes shots aren’t going to fall,” Newby said. “So, we keep it up on the defensive end. We knowthe shots will eventually fall.
“We have a bunch of elite people on our team. So when we shoot, we’re going to keep the faith the next shot will go down.”
Newby followed up his 3pointer with a running bank-in. Then, he made the assist on a 3-pointer by Justin Moore. The three-play flurry left the Blazing Trojans in front 20-12.
“He’s a leader,” Bloom coach Dante Maddox said of Newby. “He played quality minutes as a freshman on varsity. He’s a real steady player.
“He’s our rock. When things don’t go right, I trust him being one of our leaders to get us back on track.”
It was Bloom’s first game since having a season-long unbeaten streak snapped in a 58-44 loss to Curie at the Pontiac Holiday Tournament.
“It’s been a long week,” Williams said. “Itwas a tough loss
against Curie. We just wanted to bounce back fromthatand get a good ‘W.’
“We might have been too pumped up for this game. We started out kind of slow and they put the first punch on us. But we kept our composure and we kept going after it.”
Williams applied the exclamation mark late in the fourth quarter when he took a long lob fromNewby and completed a thunderous dunk.
If Newby’s early 3-pointerwas the most critical, the pass for the slam was a crowd-pleaser.
“God blessed me to play with a lot of athletic people like Dante Maddox Jr., Martice and Keshawn,” Newby said. “It’s fun to get on fast breaks with them and just throwit up there to bring the crowd energy.”