SHELBY — Alex Bruskotter’s ailing ankle didn’t seem any worse for the wear Friday night.
Shelby’s 6-foot-7 senior guard scored 14 of his game-high 24 points in the first quarter as the Whippets cruised to a 72-44 win over Madison in the season opener.
A Wright State recruit, Bruskotter missed most of the preseason after rolling his ankle during the first week of practice.
“I’m good now,” said Bruskotter, who connected on four 3-pointers in the opening period as the Whippets raced to an 18-9 lead. “If I could make four 3s in the first quarter every game, I would.
“It was good because then Madison started coming out on me and I could get downhill easier.”
Madison opened the second quarter on a 7-0 run and cut Shelby’s lead to 18-16 on a layup by Cameron Kuhn with 6:10 to play. Bruskotter stopped the bleeding with a conventional three-point play with 5:40 to go, sparking a 14-5 Shelby run to close the half.
While Bruskotter did the heavy lifting in the first half — he scored 22 of Shelby’s 35 points before the break — he had plenty of help in the third and fourth quarters. The Whippets outscored the Rams 24-10 in the third as Brayden DeVito connected on three 3-pointers.
DeVito and Casey Lantz each finished with 11 points. Issaiah Ramsey added 10, giving the Whippets four double-digit scorers.
“We know we have multiple guys who can score,” Shelby coach Greg Gallaway said. “We had 20 assists as a team. We don’t want to settle for good shots. We want to get great shots.”
The Rams were led by Owen Wigton, who scored 13 points. Eli Lewis added nine.
“This is the first time we’ve had our five starters together,” Madison coach Chris Armstrong said. “We’ve had a couple of injuries and had two starters out. There’s going to be a steep learning curve.
“Coming in we said there were three things we needed to take care of. We had to keep them off the offensive boards, we had to play good transition defense and we needed to take care of the basketball. We didn’t do any of those things very well.”
With eight seniors returning from a team that won 20 games last season, Shelby is expecting big things this winter.
“We can’t come out and think we’re going to beat everyone,” Bruskotter said. “We have to put the work in and value the process.”