BILLINGS — There isn’t much that can put a fright into the Billings West boys basketball team these days.
Winners of five straight after comfortably beating Billings Senior 53-32 at home Friday night, the top-ranked Golden Bears are feeling rather fearless.
“We walked into our locker room (at halftime) and there was a little mouse running around,” West coach Kelly Darragh said with some glee. “I’ve never heard a group of boys scream as loud as they did.”
West senior Mitchell Fogelsong cast some doubt on the veracity of Darragh’s claim as to the of volume level in the locker room, but Fogelsong did verify the rodent’s sighting.
“It was rather terrifying,” Fogelsong conceded.
Aside from that, it was a pretty peaceful outing for the Bears. Though the Broncs answered Cooper Tyson’s steal and dunk for the first points of the game with four consecutive points of their own, the Bears went on a 22-0 run spanning the first and second quarters.
That quickly put to rest any upset hopes the unranked Broncs might have had.
“West is a really good team,” said Senior coach Drew Haws, whose Broncs dropped to 2-8 overall and 2-4 in the Eastern AA. “They move the ball maybe as good as I’ve ever seen a high school team move the ball.”
Tyson scored all 15 of his team-high points in the first half as the Bears seemingly could do no wrong. They held a 36-10 lead by halftime and once again were able to get great looks at the basket without having to resort to the 3-point shot.
Tyson had the
