Police win base basketball championship Published March 7, 2006 By SrA Jonathan Jones 434th ARW Public Affairs Grissom Air Reserve Base, Ind -- Ty Spangler scored a game high 24 points to give the Department of Defense Police a 72-52 basketball championship win over the 434th Communications Squadron on Saturday night of the March unit training assembly. Spangler had help in the backcourt as Ralph Ross drained five 3-pointers and finished with 21 points. At the end of the first half, the DOD Police had a confident 35-25 lead over COMM. Ross believed there were key aspects to maintaining the halftime lead and winning the game. “Keep spreading it out like were doing and get the threes if they give them to us, if not will probably have to start putting it inside to our big guys,” said Ross at the half. Tim Spangler, the coach for DOD Police, felt confident about his team’s effort at the end of the first half. “I think we’re doing a good overall job, everybody’s working hard and stepping up, we’re kind of the midgets and broken old guys, but were doing alright,” said Coach Spangler. Rich Percival and Trent Ward scored 17 and 15 points respectively for the communicators. At the close of the first half, Rocky Ash, the coach for COMM said “Our guys are doing pretty good, we’re trying to play a nice clean ball game and tensions get a little tight, but that’s the way it’s been every time we play the DOD Police.” To win this game, Chris Percival for COMM said “We need to make some 3-pointers and play good defense.” In the first few minutes of the second-half, COMM began to make a comeback with a pair of threes, but could only pull within seven points of their rival at 45-38 before the cops handcuffed them defensively. With over seven minutes to play, Ty Spangler began the offensive assault with a 3-pointer for the DOD police. Then Ross added back-to-back long-range bombs with fewer than six minutes to play. Two more treys by Ross and Ty Spangler secured a victory, making the score 65-48 with less than two minutes to play. After the game, a winded Ty Spangler, had a big smile on his face because the cops had won the game. “It felt good, we got in the groove in the second half of that game and everybody was hitting their shots and Ralph was hitting his shots and made our transition a lot easier, running back playing defense putting some pressure on them and everybody got involved in the game and it was fun.”
