Grapevine boys basketball gets back on track

The Grapevine boys basketball team appears to be back on track after a brief stumble near the midpoint of district competition, and coach Jeremy Mills said the Mustangs looked strong in every facet last Friday night.

Grapevine played Fort Worth Polytechnic on Tuesday night after the press deadline and will take on Fort Worth Eastern Hills at 6:30 p.m. on Friday at the Billingsley Field House.

“I expect the Eastern Hills game to be a lot like the other Fort Worth schools,” Mills said. “They are very athletic. They’re tough and they play extremely hard, and that makes them a tough team to beat.”

Grapevine defeated Lake Dallas by a score of 72-48 on Friday night, and Mills said that he was pretty pleased with how his team performed on both sides of the ball.

“I thought we did a great job getting to the free throw line and attacking the paint the entire night,” Mills said. “They did a really good job of not leaving our shooters. It was probably the game that we made the least amount of 3 pointers, but we scored 72 points because them not leaving our shooters, it really opened up a lot of driving lanes, and we really attacked the paint all night and got to the free throw line. I think we made 21 free throws in the game.”

Boone Montgomery led the team in scoring with 20 points, and his effort did not go unnoticed by the Grapevine coach.

“He’s probably one of our best athletes,” Mills said. “He is just relentless and fearless and he’s in attack mode the entire 32 minutes, and his style of play just really helps us by making us a really aggressive team, both defensively and offensively.”

With two games left in the season, Mills said that he is feeling pretty good about the way his team is playing as the playoffs approach.

“I want us to be more consistent for four quarters,” Mills said. “We were playing our best basketball in the first round of district, and then ran into Dunbar and it kind of knocked us down a little bit. It took us a game or two to recover from that ... but the second round is always tougher.

“Opponents know us better, but we know them better also. We’re healthy. We’re playing good team basketball and good defense, and those are all key ingredients at this time of year.”

This story was originally published February 8, 2016 at 3:28 PM with the headline "Grapevine boys basketball gets back on track."