Complete-team win: Garden City blasts Pratt to improve to 3-0 in league play

Garden City, KS-In just three games, Charles Chukwu has definitely made his presence felt. 

The sophomore filled the stat sheet with eight points, 12 rebounds, and five blocks, Braxton Jones scored 29, and Garden City cruised to an 82-66 victory over Pratt Sunday afternoon at Conestoga Arena.  

Brody Robinson finished with 24 points and seven assists, and Thomas Tut added 12 points and nine boards.  

"The big thing in this game is that we got stops," Head Coach, Rusty Elmore said. "We hit some big shots, and then Brody kind of took the game over for us."

They also cleaned things up, and after turning the ball over 24 times on Tuesday, the Broncbusters had just nine giveaways in this one.  

"This was a great team win," Elmore stated.  

Garden City, which improved to 6-2 overall and 2-0 in conference play, never trailed, building an early 9-2 lead following Robinson's triple from the wing. But it was Chukwu who set the tone at the expense of Bubba Russ, first rejecting him 30 seconds into the contest; then swatting Russ's floater in the lane before pinning a layup attempt in the final two minutes of the half. Chukwu added another block early in the final period when he sent Caleb Smith's finger roll into the wall. He recorded his final rejection on another Smith layup attempt with six minutes to play.  

"I thought Charles was so much better in the second half," Elmore said.  

Despite never leading in the game, Pratt kept things close, pulling to within two following a pair of Kayvontay Williams free throws that made it 56-54 with 12:16 remaining. But Garden City answered with a 16-7 run over the next nine minutes, capping it off with a perfect alley-oop pass from Robinson to Thomas Tut, who flew in from the right baseline, grabbed the ball with two hands over his head, and threw down a momentum-shifting jam that put the Broncbusters up, 73-61 with 3:53 to go.  

"I'm just super proud of these guys," Elmore added. "To start 3-0 in this league is not an easy thing to do. We still have a long way to go, but I thought we were consistently better today than we were on Tuesday." 

Jones finished 5-of-14 from deep for Garden City, which connected on 10-of-27 (37 percent) from downtown as a team. They outrebounded Pratt, 35-26 and scored 22 points off 15 Beaver turnovers. 

Russ had 19 points and nine rebounds for Pratt, which fell to 2-5 overall and 0-3 in the Jayhawk. Williams finished with 22 points and nine assists, and Deon McLaughlin tallied 12 points and six boards.