Millburn Basketball Stifles Belleville

Millburn’s defense continued to roll on Thursday afternoon at home as they suffocated the visiting Belleville Buccaneers, 51-6, improving to 6-2 overall.

It was a ball game for most of the first quarter, with Millburn holding on to a 7-2 lead with slightly over a minute left. But Millburn forced three turnovers in the final minute of the quarter and scored six points, taking a 15-2 lead into the second quarter.

They might as well have stopped playing the game at that point because Millburn stepped on the gas and went on to blow away the Buccaneers, who scored four points the rest of the way.

“You can’t look at the competition or anything else. You can‘t come like that,” said Millburn head coach Bob Drennan. “I told them when we were stretching, I said you’re not stretching right, then when we warmed up I stopped the warm-ups and said you’re not warming up right. I’ve seen this act too many times in my life in my 30 years of coaching.”

Belleville really had trouble scoring as evidenced by the score. After scoring two in the first quarter off of a Vanessa Gomez lay-up with more than four minutes to play, Belleville did not find the basket again until the final minute of the first half. The Bucs scored within the first two minutes of play in the third quarter and were shutout the rest of the way, even with Millburn clearing the bench with 2:36 left in the third quarter.

Overall, Millburn stole the ball 23 times (led by seven from Tori Graessle) and forced 33 Belleville turnovers. On top of that, Belleville made just three-of-36 shots from the floor for slightly over eight percent.

Over the last two games, Millburn’s defense has allowed a total of 17 points. While some of that success has to do with the quality of competition, some of it can also be attributed to the Millers playing well.

“It’s a combination. I think we’ve played pretty good defense, but it’s definitely a combination,” Drennan said.

On the other side of the ball, while Millburn certainly did not have its greatest offensive performance ever, they were able to maximize the turnovers to help run away with this one. Jenny Smith led all scorers with 12 points, but 11 players had at least one point and six had at least four. Sam Abrams had a game-high eight rebounds. Millburn made 38 percent of its shots from the floor, committed 18 turnovers and made four-of-15 free throws.

“The one thing is that we are totally unselfish, if you watched the way we passed it. But we’ve got a real big game on Saturday against Verona and we’ll see what we’re made of,” Drennan said. “In my mind, they all did ok, no one person stood out for me.”

The victory keeps Millburn unbeaten within the county and on a collision course with Cedar Grove (7-2 overall, no losses in Colonial Division) a week from Saturday with the winner taking the lead in the SEC Colonial. The Miller girls are in action again on Saturday at home against Verona and then have three consecutive road games next week.