Junior Brown Helps Get Knights Off To 2-0 Start, Thinks Metro-East Can Go Far In IHSA Playoffs Later This Season
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By COLIN FEENEY
GLEN CARBON - Junior Brown, a senior guard for the boys' basketball team at Metro-East Lutheran, has lent a big hand in helping the Knights start 2-0 for the new season.
In Metro-East's season opener at home against Granite City on Dec. 5, Brown scored 19 points in a 14-62 win over Granite City, and the next night, Dec. 6, in the Gateway Metro Conference opener at Father McGivney Catholic, he scored 11 points as the Knights took an exciting win over the Griffins.
Brown is a BJ's Printables Male Athlete Of the Month for the Knights.
Brown is considered one of the key players for Metro-East this season, and in a postgame interview that followed the win over McGivney, he was very happy with how things turned out for his team.
"I'm feeling good," Brown said. "I"m really liking how we look right now. We look like a family, a well-oiled machine. Everything that we work on in practice, the grinding, as to working hard, with no balls at practices, it's coming all together. We're looking really good."
Brown hit some key shots both early and late in the game, but it was Thijson Heard who had the hot hand, and he scored 39 points in the win over McGivney.
"Well, Thijson Heard, he was really hot," Brown said. "So we were really trying to find him, and shoot them off the two-three (zone defense the Griffins were playing). They didn't want to come out of it, so he kept firing them, and he did well. He kept making them. He's been doing his job the last two games; he's scored over 30."
Preseason practice, in which the Knights worked without balls, went exceptionally well, and the team has looked particularly well in the opening games.
There are some key goals that Brown hopes to help the Knights achieve this season.
"I want us all to continue to play as a team," Brown said, "as a family, on and off the court. We are all close together, and like I said, get to state."
The Knights are off to a very good start, especially in a tough league such as the Gateway Metro Conference, which not only contains the Knights and Griffins, but Marquette Catholic, Centralia Christ Our Rock Lutheran, and Maryville Christian as well.
"We are in a pretty hard conference," Brown said. "But I feel like we're the best team in that conference, and I feel like we can go pretty far."
