Big Walnut boys pull away in 68-32 win over Utica

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

The Golden Eagles weren’t about to let this one get away.

Big Wal­nut (1–1), lead­ing 29–19 at the end of the open­ing half, outscored Utica 49–13 over the final two quar­ters to cruise to a 68–32 non-conference vic­tory over the vis­it­ing Red­skins in their home opener Mon­day night in Sun­bury. The game marked Utica’s 2012–13 sea­son opener

The Golden Eagles, sparked by the out­side shoot­ing 6-foot-1 senior Zach Laugh­man and the inside play of 6–6 senior Adam Sha­heen who knocked down a two-handed slam dunk, hit six its first eight shots to open the sec­ond half to take a 43–21 lead and never looked back. Laugh­man, who led Big Wal­nut with 14 points, ignited the surge with three bas­kets before sink­ing a three-pointer from mid­court to send the hosts into the final period with a 23-point, 46–23 advantage.

“The third quar­ter was huge,” Big Wal­nut head coach Eric Myers said. “Our goal is to dom­i­nate on our home court, both offen­sively and defen­sively, and we accom­plished that in the sec­ond half.”

The Golden Eagles did not let up. After hit­ting seven of 10 shots while lim­it­ing the Red­skins to two bas­kets in 12 attempts in the third period, Big Wal­nut went on to can nine of 12 shots in the final quar­ter, includ­ing a run of three con­sec­u­tive treys off the bench by Logan Boyd, Nick Her­bert and Matt Tar­ney in a game-ending 19–2 run which put the hosts up 30 at 60–30 with 3:03 to play. The Red­skins man­age to con­vert three of 13 attempts in the period.

“We exe­cuted as a team in the sec­ond half,” Myers said. “We did a great job run­ning our offense and we pretty much took Utica out of its game plan with our defense.”

A total off 11 play­ers broke into the scor­ing col­umn for Big Wal­nut. Sha­heen backed Laugh­man with 13 points while 5–11 sopho­more Michael Buck­les and 5–11 junior Logan Boyd fol­lowed with 8 points apiece.

“We did a good job dis­trib­ut­ing the bas­ket­ball and cre­at­ing good shots,” Myers said. “And as a result we had tremen­dous scor­ing bal­ance with 11 play­ers scoring.”

Thanks to its 72.7 (16-for-22) sec­ond half shoot­ing per­cent­age, Big Wal­nut fin­ished with a 27-for-47, 57.4 per­cent­age for the game. The Golden Eagles shot 56.3 (9-for-16) from behind the arc. They were 5-for-7 at the foul line. Big Wal­nut com­mit­ted only 12 turnovers in 56 pos­ses­sions, los­ing only 5 points on its ball-handling errors.

Utica was led by 6–3 senior Luke Holmes who tal­lied 9 points. Class­mates Broc Stradley fol­lowed with 8 and Seth Kirk­endall with 4 points. No other Red­skin scored more than 2 points.

The Red­skins shot 27.9 per­cent on 12-for-43 shoot­ing (2-for-14 from, 3-point range) and were 5-for-10 at the line. Utica turned the ball over 13 times, mis­takes the Golden Eagles turned into 16 points.

Big Wal­nut returns to action Fri­day, host­ing rival Olen­tangy in both team’s Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion opener in Sun­bury. Tip-off time is 7:30 p.m. with the JVs get­ting under­way at 6 p.m.

Posted by Gary Henery on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.