PEMBROKE – When Bryce Johnson gets in the lane, he can let it go from any angle. On Friday, the 6-foot-3 Bishop Brady junior used his slippery mix of flips, floaters and fades to score 22 points and lead the Green Giants to a 72-47, season-opening win at Pembroke Academy.
“He totally outplayed any post player we put out there,” Pembroke Coach Shannon Sciria said. “He totally dominated the paint, and credit to him, he came in here and he was on a mission.”
Johnson developed his clever array of inside moves playing against his older brother, Brendan, who was a captain for the Giants when they won the title in 2015.
“I learned it in the driveway, just trying to get shots over my brother,” Johnson said.
As a 5-6 freshman, the younger Johnson had no choice but to loft shots in the driveway. Now that he’s spurted to 6-3, that ability to alter release points and a soft touch makes scoring seem easy for Johnson.
“It looked like he was playing by himself out there at times,” Sciria said.
That was an apt description, except for the times when Johnson was passing … or receiving passes from his unselfish teammates. Brady assisted on seven of its first 10 buckets, and Johnson and Eero Myllymaki (a Finnish exchange student who had 12 points in his first game with Brady) each finished with a team-high four assists.
“I thought the best thing about this game was we played as a team,” Brady Coach Cole Etten said. “The ball movement came from playing as a team.”
And that ball movement led to 10-for-14 shooting in the first quarter as Brady came out firing on all cylinders. All five starters scored in the first 4:25 of the game and the Giants took a 26-12 lead after the first quarter.
“Once you get an assist or you get a quick bucket, it helps you on defense. Then if you’re playing well on defense, it helps you on offense,” said Brady senior point guard Matt Quirk, who had 19 points and three assists. “So everything came together for us tonight.”
Junior Jake Sherman scored 10 of his 22 points in the first quarter to keep the Spartans in sight of Brady, but he was the only player hitting early for Pembroke, which went just 4-for-17 from the floor in the opening frame.
The Giants extended their lead in the second behind a strong quarter from big man Matt Desmarais (11 points, 13 rebounds, three assists, two blocks) and took a 41-25 lead into halftime.
Energized by four points from sophomore guard Sean Menard (11 points), Pembroke made a push early in the third and cut the lead to 45-36 midway through the quarter. But the Giants went on an 11-3 run to close the third (Johnson scored six of those points) and pushed the lead to 56-39 going into the fourth.
“We worked really hard in the offseason, we had a good fall league and coach helped us prepare for this moment,” Quirk said. “It’s a good start, but it’s definitely not the end result. We’re on to Pelham (the two-time Division III champs now playing in D-II) on Thursday, and we have really high hopes for this year.”
While Brady was making a second straight trip to the D-II semifinals last year, Pembroke was struggling through an 0-16 season in D-I. The Spartans appear to be in the right division now, but that just made Friday’s result a little more painful.
“Right now, it’s a tough one to swallow because after last year, going 0-16, we kind of wanted to come in here and make a statement,” Sciria said. “So this one stings probably worse than anything last year.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341 or tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20.)