By Bryce McKinnis
No. 1 Broken Arrow maintained its undefeated status Tuesday night in a 72-57 win over visiting Bartlesville.
Senior Oklahoma State signee Connor Dow paced the Tigers early, scoring 9 of his team’s first 12 points.
“Obviously, Connor can really shoot the ball, but he’s doing a lot better job just getting to the rim, just making his game a lot harder to guard,” Broken Arrow coach Beau Wallace said after the win. “We always feed off of him, and then obviously, we have a lot of other guys that can get going as well.”
Dow finished the night with 16 points to lead the Tigers (11-0). Senior guard Justice Sutton trailed with 14. Dason Cook added 9.
The Tigers got a boost from two De’von Wallace triples in the first half. By the midway point, Broken Arrow led 35-21 but was far from ending its run.
With Dow resting a majority of the third quarter, his teammates broke away to a 24-point lead.
“We moved the ball. We made wide-open shots. That’s one of the things that we’ve talked about a lot is when it’s all of our guys that can shoot the ball are going to make shots,” Wallace said. “I thought that we did that tonight. We had multiple guys that made shots in the first half and second half.”
Bartlesville five-star junior recruit David Castillo scored a game-high 22 points but was limited to six in the first half. Wallace commended his defense.
“He (Castillo) is a really good player. He’s going to really good things, but just trying to show bodies. . . trying to put some length on him, make him shoot over the top of him,” Wallace said, “and just make him work every possession. I thought he did a really good job of just working to get points.”
Up next
The Tigers travel to Shawnee to play in its tournament starting 11 a.m. Thursday against the hosting Wolves. Other contenders in the tournament include Choctaw, Mustang, Jenks and Union, Southeast and El Reno.
“A lot of those teams area really good and ranked in the top 10 or 15 in the state in their class,” Wallace said. “So it’ll be a good one for us, will be a nice test in the middle of January.”
