Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Brian Pitts
Enterprise Record

Through three games, and especially during the first half against visiting Atkins on Dec. 21, the Davie freshman basketball team showed why varsity coach Bruce Wallace is drooling about his ninth-grade class.
The War Eagles of Mike Dinkins came out breathing fire and hung 44 points on Atkins in the first half. They came back to earth a bit in the second half and settled for a 66-52 victory.
Elliot Erlandsson and Connor Hood were the main weapons during a 27-point first quarter. Landon Waller and Wade Bomar led the way during a 17-point second.
“I think that’s the most I’ve ever had a team score in a quarter,” Dinkins said as Davie cruised to 3-0. “We hit five 3s (in the first quarter).”
Erlandsson finished with 16 points while hitting four 3-pointers. Davie got 14 points from Waller, 12 from Hood and 11 from Bomar, who nailed three triples. David Patton had six, Cameron Owens five and Josiah Johnson two.
Waller was a beast in the paint, easily getting a double-double in points/rebounds and adding six blocked shots.
“Landon controlled the boards on both ends,” Dinkins said. “He had 12 rebounds when I stopped counting. He probably had 16. A couple of (the blocks) were knocked-off-the-wall blocks.”
There were some blemishes. After hitting seven 3s in the first half, Davie hit one in the second. It also let a big lead get trimmed to nine.
“We went brain dead in the third quarter,” he said. “Connor hit a huge shot to stop the drought and put us up by 11. … We turned the ball over (too much). We’ve got to improve. We had around 18 turnovers, some of them unforced.”