AUBURN – Though just a sophomore, Troy Barnies has been the linchpin of Edward Little’s offense this season. And because he’s a sophomore that’s meant he’s had to learn a lot of things.
EL’s coaches have been challenging the lanky forward to become more of a factor in the final minutes of close games. Tuesday night, he took the challenge and led the Red Eddies to the biggest win of the year.
Barnies scored seven of his team-high 10 points in the span of about a minute in the fourth quarter to lead the Eddies to a 46-41 comeback win over Waterville.
“I knew someone had to step up, and if no one else was, I was going to have to,” Barnies said. “I didn’t want to lose to team like Waterville, not to be disrespectful to them, because even though our record’s 4-9, we’re still looking to go to the playoffs.”
Quiet for much of the night at the offensive end, Barnies shook off a jammed wrist he suffered in the fourth quarter to lead the charge.
A nice baseline move by Andy Vayo put Waterville (4-9) up 41-37 with two minutes left. EL quickly pushed the ball upcourt to find Barnies open behind the 3-point arc on the right wing. His shot bounced off the back of the rim and in to pull the Red Eddies within one.
Thirty seconds later, Barnies drained two free throws to put the Eddies up for good, 42-41. On EL’s next trip up the floor, he took a runner in the lane and, aided by another kind bounce off the back of the rim, made it 44-41 with 42 seconds left.
“It was kind of a reversal of what he did the first half of the year. He’d score 12, 15 points in the first half then two in the second,” EL coach Mike Adams said. “Consistently, we’ve said: You have to step up in the fourth quarter. You have to be more aggressive. You can’t settle for jump shots. You have to look to attack a little bit.’ And he’s done a good job.”
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“But teams are focused a lot more on stopping him,” he added, “so over the course of a game, once we establish our other threats, then I think you have to honor those things as well and then that opens up some things that we try to run for Troy.”
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Darin Meyers (10 points, seven rebounds), Ryan Goss (seven points, all in the second half) and Kyle Philbrook (six points, five steals) all helped keep EL in the game before Barnies’ explosion keyed the game-closing 9-0 run.
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It was a game of runs in the first half, too. The Eddies and the Purple Panthers alternated 8-0 runs through the first 11 minutes. A pretty baseline give-and-go between Chipper Houston and Meyers tied the game at 12 and started of a 9-0 EL burst. Waterville was able to counter somewhat with a 6-1 run of its own as Flowers started to heat up from the outside to make it a two-point game at halftime.
“We were looking for an inside-out game against their zone and we knocked a couple of shots down with some good ball movement,” said Waterville coach Jason Briggs. “Then we went into these funks where we stopped moving the basketball and we turned the ball over too much.”
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