A High Quiz Bowl convention broke out

Prologue
Night 2 of the season takes me to a new opening season tourney at Eagle Ridge Academy in the depths of the Opus office park.  Its a group of high academic schools so its aptly named the Brains and Balls tourney.  Nova Classical Academy, Mounds Park Academy, Eagle Ridge Academy and Math & Science Academy all represented.  Chick-Fil-A at the concession stand so I'm all over that at halftime of the 1st game.

Game 1: Mounds Park Academy 48 Nova Classical Academy 43
Good first half for Nova as they take a 5 point lead to the break.  No answer inside for Silas Revenaugh as he scores 13 of his 19 points in the half.  Adnaan Said heats up with 11 of his 20 in the 2nd half.  Micah Hudock 3 triples in the 2nd half (13 pts for the game) to keep MPA close.  Panthers trail by 4 with 11 minutes left but finish the game on a 14-5 run to win. Nova with 4 of their 22 turnovers late to stop any chance they had.  Nova started 16-31 from the floor but finished 2-15 in those last 11 minutes.

Game 2: Math & Science Academy 56 Eagle Ridge Academy 53
First half of this one was the Josh Balami show for Math & Science.  He scores 22 of the 28 Dragons points in the half.  Eagle Ridge starts off 1-18 from the floor to fall behind by double figures.  But they manage to stay within 5 at the break.  Eagle Ridge would show zone for most of the 2nd half and that did slow Balami down.  Balami spent time mostly playing at the FT line region after starting outside against that.  The Gryphons cut the lead down to 4 but see it blow up to 13 with under 3 minutes left.  Then Balami fouls out with 1:21 left and all havoc breaks lose.  Turnovers on 6 of the next 7 trips for the Dragons.  Eagle Ridge had 5 fouls to give and it was almost a blessing that the fouls forced inbounds plays for turnovers rather than free throws.  The lead is down to 3 with 6.5 seconds left.  Dragons can ice it at the charity stripe but the front end is no good.  Rebound tapped out towards half court and it goes back to Math and Science in the last 5 seconds.  Dragons get the last inbounds pass in and hang on to win.  Josh Balami outstanding with 22 of his 28 points in the 1st half for Math and Science.  He added in 14 rebounds, 6 assists and 6 steals on my officially unofficial stat sheet.  First reaction for a player like this in the EMAC is that he gets a ton of shots and lights up bad competition.  While its true the competition isn't great, its far easier when watching him to make the case that he's unselfish to a fault.  Very poised and willing to share the ball and be a team player first.  Only 3 missed shots to get those 28 points.  Math and Science commits 20 of their 27 turnovers in the 2nd half including 6 in the last 1:20 with Balami fouled out.

Czar Insights

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