Greenbrier Unbridles Cards’ Offense

FARMINGTON — A dropoff in point production cost Farmington in the second half as the Cardinal boys basketball suffered a 59-46 home-court loss to Greenbrier Jan. 5 at Cardinal Arena.

Farmington led 27-25 at halftime, but was outscored 34-21 in the second half as Greenbrier worked its half-court offense. Four Panthers, A.J. Matthews (14), Devin Clark (14), Kobe Dunlap (13), and Austin Thomey (11) combined for 52 points.

Greenbrier coach Mike Simmons said his team hadn’t played for 17 days and looked like that early.

“In the first half we played individually,” Simmons said. “In the second half we started looking for each other.”

Farmington was led by senior Jacob Gray with 14 points. Nobody else reached double figures.

“We’ve got to score 60 points to beat a good team,” said Farmington coach Beau Thompson. “We got 48. Greenbrier may be the No. 1 seed on the other side of our league.”

Senior guard Peyton Maxwell blocked a shot, rebounded and pushed the ball upcourt before finding Skyler Montez for a layup to narrow the Panther lead to 45-41 with 6:16 left in the fourth. Simmons took timeout and the Cardinals never got any closer. The 6-foot-7 Matthews threw down a two-handed slam-dunk starting a 6-0 Greenbrier run to put the game away.

Thompson continued to develop 6-feet-6 sophomore Austin Shelley, whose putback closed out the scoring.

“He’s giving us 8-to12 quality minutes every night,” Thompson said. “Everybody in our league’s got one, 6-feet-7 or 6-feet-8 so we’ve got to have him.”