GRAHAMSVILLE -- Basketball has a saying, “You can live or die with three-point shooting," and it came true for the Tri-Valley Bears this past Friday night as the Sullivan West Bulldogs posted a 53-45 league win off the outstanding 25-point scoring of Junior forward Cody Powell.

Tri-Valley Coach Kevin Delaney in post game remarks addressed the question about the three point shot and said very clearly, “Certain games it becomes a factor but if it's not going it's not going.”

Delaney pointed out, “Our philosophy is to work for a good shot, and we were making those shots early and it was a good game but then we started rushing our shots and they were no longer good shots.”

The first quarter of play was encouraging for the Bears three point shooting as they took a 14-10 lead with two treys by Andrew Cox. They did not connect on additional three's until 6:33 of the third quarter.

Defense with plenty of help from offense came into play for Sulliivan West in the second eight minutes of play as the Bears were limited to six points off two foul shots and two deuces while Sullivan West's Junior Cody Powell poured in 17 points off three treys, three two pointers and two foul shots pushing the Bulldogs half-time lead to 27-20.

Sullivan West outscored Tri-Valley 16-12 in the third quarter with the Bears edging the Bulldogs 13-10 in the fourth quarter.

In the turnover stats Sullivan West committed 21 to Tri-Valley's 19.

Overall scoring honors for Sullivan West goes to Cody Powell who scored close to half of the Bulldogs' total of 53 points as he ripped the nets for 25 points off three treys, six two-pointers and four foul shots.

Johnathon Maiori led Tri-Valley's scoring with 10 points off two treys and two deuces.

Sullivan West's early season record stands at 1-1 with the one loss coming in the Walton tournament while Tri-Valley is 0-2.

Bulldogs Coach John Meyer said, “I'll take a win, that's all I want, and we played well when we had to and luckily they missed some shots.”

Meyer added that, “We got to work on fundamentals and playing our spots and to understand team concept. They (Tri-Valley) are a good team, we will face them again and we will take a league win any day.”