AUBURN — Samatar Iman picked a good time to halt his recent shooting woes.
The Edward Little senior scored 15 of his game-high 25 points in the fourth quarter to help the unbeaten Red Eddies shake off a pesky Brunswick team with a 63-49 win Friday night.
“It’s a great feeling. Today was my first day out of the slump,” Iman said. “I’m glad I hit my shots today, especially with it being a big game. We were down a lot today. It’s not the way we normally play.”
“That’s a huge psychological thing for Samatar,” Edward Little coach Mike Adams said. “Last year, he would get out of it sometimes when he wasn’t playing well or things weren’t going his way. He started to do that a little bit tonight. But he made those last eight minutes count. Without those points, we don’t win the game. He was active defensively and just played.”
Jarod Norcross Plourde chipped in with 18 points and 10 rebounds while Darby Shea added 15 points for EL (13-0). Corban Teel led Brunswick (6-6) with 16 points and Josh Dorr added 11 points.
Brunswick led the Eddies by three points at halftime and still held the lead until Norcross Plourde’s 3-pointer beat the third quarter horn and put EL up to stay, 45-43.
While the win-loss records suggested a mismatch on paper, the Eddies weren’t surprised to be in a tough game with the Dragons. They only beat them by eight in the teams’ first meeting on Dec. 30 in Brunswick.
“Coach (Todd) Hanson is a great coach. He’s been doing a great job for a long time,” Iman said. “They’re a great team. They’ve got great shooters and they played their zone very well.”
“Their big men down low are really physical,” said EL sophomore Wol Maiwen (seven points, six rebounds). “That’s one of the things you have to get through.”
Iman picked up where Norcross Plourde left off by hitting a 3-pointer to start the fourth. He followed with a drive to the hoop and another 3 to put the Eddies up 53-45.
Teel cut it to six briefly before back-to-back 3s from Shea and Iman put the game away for EL.
The Eddies looked like they might pull away early when a Shea 3-pointer put their lead into double digits for the first time at 25-14 early in the second quarter. But Teel, who scored the Dragons’ first nine points of the period, and Dorr led a 15-4 Brunswick run to end the half.
Nate Benoit capped the half with a deep 3-pointer that gave the Dragons a 32-29 lead at the break.
“Defensively, we did an awful job in the first half … of just keeping the ball in front of us,” Adams said. “They scored 32 in the first half, and that’s too much by anybody against us. Once we got beat off the dribble, that means we have to help and that just gave them easier scoring opportunities.”
“We just had to get our heads in the game and stay in the game,” Maiwen said. “It was a big mental game today.”
Norcross Plourde scored 11 points in the third quarter to help the Eddies grind their way to the two-point lead heading into the fourth.
“They had a great game plan and their kids executed. We knew that was going to be a battle,” Adams said. “They went to that diamond-and-one. They were face-guarding Darby, and I looked at Jarod and Samatar and said, ‘You’re too good not to be guarded.’ That’s what in essence they were doing.”
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