Pilgrims Look To Build On Impressive Opening-Season Win

Joel Grindle had a feeling his 2022-23 Plymouth Pilgrims boys basketball team would be much improved.

After all, the Pilgrims return several players who got valuable experience a year ago as they endured a 6-17 season.

Fast forward to Year Two of the Grindle Era and Plymouth is no longer young and inexperience. Quite the contrary. The Pilgrims now start four seniors.

Those upperclassmen helped Plymouth open the season with an impressive 46-37 victory over Glenn last Wednesday.

You might recall the Pilgrims lost to the Falcons a year ago, 55-38 and it wasn’t even that close.

This year, though, Plymouth outscored the visitors in every quarter except the first.

Senior forward Davis Wray was good … very good. He had a game-high 17 points, 10 in the second stanza. Wray knocked down 6-of-8 free throws, including 3-of-4 in the final eight minutes to seal the victory.

Classmate Michael Sheely, a forward, chipped in eight points, and sophomore Kayden Ellery was clutch. Ellery tallied nine points, but none more important than his four free throws in the fourth quarter.

With his team holding on to a 39-35 lead with just over a minute left in the game, Ellery was fouled and stepped to the line for a one-and-one. He buried the first and nailed the second to make it a six-point game.

As a team, the Pilgrims knocked down 11-of-15 free throws.

This was definitely a team win for Plymouth.

Sophomore Preston Wolfe buried his only triple of the game with just over a minute left in the third quarter giving his team a 30-28 lead, a lead it would never relinquish.

Then with Plymouth clinging to a one-point advantage in the fourth quarter, senior guard Trey Hall scored his only points of the night – a three-pointer – with 3:24 left in the game.

Plymouth seemed to have an answer every time you thought Glenn might go on a run and seize control. On this night, the Pilgrims simply would not be denied, showing resiliency that just wasn’t present a year ago.

Take Plymouth senior big man Easton Strain for instance. He had just four points, but more than held his own playing good interior defense on Glenn standout senior Brycen Hannah. Hannah led the Falcons with 11 points, having to really earn each and every one of them. Hannah did have an off shooting night as he missed 13 of 16 shots from the floor.

You might recall this is a Glenn team that enjoyed one of its best seasons ever a year ago going 24-2 and at one point was ranked No. 1 in the state in Class 3A.

Going forward the Falcons will be just fine and will enjoy another really successful year. They are breaking in a new point guard after Silas Kaser departed and are trying to find players to fill the voids left by Joe Delinski and Jack Porter.

Hannah does have a good supporting cast. Keep an eye on Joe Chrapliwy, who might be one of the best juniors around. Guards Noah Dreibelbeis and Ty Larkin, forward Joey Shoue round out a more than formidable starting five.

Glenn will look to rebound tonight when they host a good South Bend Clay team.

Plymouth, on the other hand, will look to build on its season-opening win tonight when they host a very solid Triton team, which is also 1-0 on the young season. Join us for all the action as the game can be heard on MAX 98.3 FM (WYMR) as our coverage begins just after 7 p.m. ET.

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