Youth serves Barrie in win

Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007

To continue last year’s success, which included winning the Potomac Valley Athletic Conference’s North Division title, Barrie boys basketball coach Jack Mitchell knew his team would have to execute a quick learning curve with a handful of inexperienced players sliding into key roles.

So far, those youngsters — namely sophomores Bobby Yancey, Robert Finkel, Sam Howard and Brian Silverman — have earned an ‘A’ for their play, including Friday’s 60-42 home win over a much-improved McLean squad.

‘‘We lost four starters last year plus the one transfer ... and four of those five kids were averaging double figures for us,” Mitchell said. ‘‘Getting these kids to become comfortable and to step up into this role [when] they should be playing JV [is tough, but] we don’t let them think that.

‘‘You can see their confidence gaining each game. It helps when these guys feel a little more comfortable with our system. We’re fortunate they’re buying into it. They’re not as tentative anymore.”

That was certainly the case Friday night, as Finkel, Yancey and Silverman combined for 36 points, including 14 in the decisive third quarter that saw Barrie turn a 27-25 halftime lead into a 49-36 advantage heading into the final eight minutes.

‘‘We lost a lot of players but our young guys are working hard in practice,” said Eric White, the team’s lone returning starter, who poured in 13 points with eight rebounds. ‘‘Our motto in huddles is ‘hard work.’ A lot of us worked hard in the offseason so that’s what we’re basing our game off this year.”

Finkel led the Barrie youngsters with 20 points and seven rebounds, including a pair of three-pointers to start the third-quarter run. The second came on a pass from White in transition. Yancey, who has helped take some of the ball-handling duties from White, added 10 points, including a pair of three-pointers after halftime.

Silverman scored all six of his points in the second half, four of which came in transition on passes from Yancey and White to build the lead to 49-30 in the third quarter and 55-37 with 3 minutes, 59 seconds left in the game to help Barrie improve to 8-5 overall and 6-0 in the North Division.

The six straight league wins have Barrie on pace to duplicate last year’s run of 11 consecutive victories en route to the division crown.

‘‘We didn’t have a great first half,” White said. ‘‘We weren’t playing that hard. They were getting all the loose balls. We wanted to come out and bring more energy.”

Despite the loss, McLean is experiencing the young school’s best season to date. After capturing just one conference win all of last season, the Mustangs (8-4) finished the game with a 5-3 PVAC mark, keeping it on pace to capture one of the higher seeds in the upcoming league tournament.

‘‘We’re all pleasantly surprised with how the first half is going,” McLean assistant coach Jake Campion said of himself and head coach Kevin Herod. ‘‘The difference between last year’s team and this year’s team, all nine of our guys just have a lot of fight. They play hard all the time.

‘‘They’ve really come together as a team. They play well together. Winning five conference games in the first half of the season is really surprising. All the credit is due to the players.”

The Mustangs fell behind, 9-0, in the early going and 14-7 after one quarter before outscoring Barrie, 18-13, in the second quarter to climb within two points by halftime. Taman Thomas and Andrew Wyatt paced McLean with 12 and 11 points, respectively.