Olentangy boys overwhelm Big Walnut, 63-36

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

Inten­sity!

Olen­tangy jumped out to a 15–4 lead with 2:49 left in the open­ing quar­ter and never looked back in hand­ing host Big Wal­nut a 63–36 in the Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion opener for both teams Fri­day night in Sunbury.

The Braves were a team on a mis­sion com­ing into Sun­bury. Olen­tangy came into the con­test after drop­ping two road games to Dublin Jerome and Dublin Scioto to open the sea­son with an 0–2 mark.

“Our goal com­ing into tonight’s game was to play with a lot of inten­sity,” Olen­tangy head coach Chris Kelly said. “We were com­ing off two road losses, includ­ing a dou­ble over­time loss to Dublin Jerome, and we knew we would have to be ready to play hard in our OCC opener against Big Wal­nut tonight.”

And play hard they did!

Seth Clark got Olen­tangy (1–2, 1–0 OCC) rolling early as the 6-foot-1 senior guard scored seven of the Braves’ first nine points. By the end of the first eight min­utes Clark had put 11 of his game-high 16 points in the book as Olen­tangy took a 19–7 advan­tage in the sec­ond quarter.

“We came out ready to play … with an atti­tude,” Kelly said. “We wanted to take con­trol of the game early and our defense did a great job of keep­ing Big Walnut’s offense of bal­ance and giv­ing us the oppor­tu­nity to build our early lead.”

Olentangy’s ever-switching defense, which saw Kelly’s troops incor­po­rate a man-to-man align­ment with an active 2–3 zone, played a key role in the Braves’ fast start. It forced Big Wal­nut into early mis­takes while hold­ing the Golden Eagles to a 3-for-14, 21.4 first-quarter shoot­ing per­cent­age while forc­ing four turnovers that resulted in eight of Olentangy’s 19 points.

“It was partly my fault. I should of called a time out sooner,” Big Wal­nut head coach Eric Myers said of the Golden Eagles’ slow start. “Olen­tangy did a good job tak­ing us out of our offense by switch­ing defenses … and we did not respond to the challenge.”

Big Wal­nut (1–2, 0–1 OCC) slowed the Braves’ attack in the sec­ond quar­ter, hold­ing Olen­tangy to nine points in the first six min­utes of the period, but the Golden Eagle offense con­tin­ued to strug­gle, turn­ing the ball over nine times in the period and went into the inter­mis­sion trail­ing by 18 points, 35–17.

The Golden Eagles were never closer than 18 of the lead in the sec­ond half, trail­ing 37–19 fol­low­ing sopho­more Michael Buck­les’ bas­ket two min­utes into the third quar­ter. By the end of the period, the Braves were up by 21 points, 49–28, thanks to a pair of treys by 5–9 senior guard Tyler Sobieray.

The Braves went on to lead by as many as 26 points in the final period before sopho­more guard James Gundling’s lay-in off a steal in the clos­ing two min­utes gave the Braves the 27-point mar­gin of victory.

Olen­tangy posted a 25-for-68, 36.8 shoot­ing per­cent­age, includ­ing a 6-for-19 effort from 3-point range. The Braves were 7-for-9 at the free throw line. Scor­ing behind Clark for Olen­tangy were Sobieray and Gundling with 9 points apiece. Senior guard Erik Brandt con­tributed 8 points. The Braves, led by 6–1 junior guard Michael Delaney’s 7 rebounds claimed a 41–37 advan­tage off the glass. Morycz fol­lowed with six boards.

In the turnover depart­ment, the Braves did not turn the ball over in the first half and only six times over the entire game, los­ing only 6 points on their mis­takes. By com­par­i­son, the Golden Eagles turned the ball over a total of 22 times at the cost of 23 points.

Senior Adam Sha­heen led Big Wal­nut with 13 points and 11 rebounds. Senior Zach Laugh­man, sopho­more Zachary Asher and Buck­les fol­lowed with 6 points apiece. The Golden Eagles shot 31.8 per­cent, 14-for-44, from the field while con­vert­ing 4 of 7 free throws. They were 4-for-19 from behind the arc.

“We’re going to go back to work and address our weak­nesses,” Myers said. “Hope­fully we learned from our mis­takes we made tonight and cor­rect them in our practices.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Dec 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.