BW boys battle DI Wolves in 65-55 setback

By ERIC CLINE

For The Sun­bury News

Big Wal­nut coach Eric Myers reminds his team often it’s a Divi­sion II team play­ing a great many Divi­sion I oppo­nents, but you won’t find many as big as their oppo­nent last Tues­day (Jan­u­ary 15) night. The Golden Eagles had trou­ble against the size and ath­leti­cism of the Wor­thing­ton Kil­bourne Wolves and lost their non-league con­test 65–55 at Big Wal­nut High School. “They’re a big team, but our kids bat­tled,” Big Wal­nut coach Eric Myers said. “I was proud of how they bat­tled tonight. I don’t feel that they ever gave up, but Wor­thing­ton Kil­bourne is very big and very ath­letic and we’re young. We just have to keep bat­tling and play­ing hard.” Big Wal­nut (5–9) was def­i­nitely at a size dis­ad­van­tage, and Wor­thing­ton Kil­bourne (5–8) exploited it at the start of both halves. The Wolves opened the game with an 18–10 first quar­ter and, after the Golden Eagles cut the deficit down to seven, 27–20, at the half, used 18–8 run in just under five min­utes to take a 17-point edge. “That’s a big lineup when they can go 6–5, 6–5, 6–5 and 6–7 on you,” Myers said. “That’s a tall order to try and defend. They were a very phys­i­cal, very ath­letic team. We gave up 18 points in the first quar­ter, got back to within seven at the half and then come out and get beat 19–9 in the third.” Wor­thing­ton Kil­bourne also flus­tered the Big Wal­nut offense with tena­cious zone defense, pres­sur­ing the Golden Eagles through­out the game. The pres­sure was most evi­dent in the first quar­ter, as the Wolves held Big Wal­nut to just one bucket on their first six shots and forced a pair of turnovers. But the Wolves’ third quar­ter run hurt most. Wor­thing­ton Kil­bourne scored on its first five pos­ses­sions of the sec­ond half and eight of its first nine, help­ing them to their 45–28 lead with just over three min­utes left in the third quar­ter. “They came after us tonight,” Myers said. “We burned a time out at the 4:48 mark of the third quar­ter after they’d scored 11 points on us. What con­cerned me was it seemed they were scor­ing at will and get­ting to the rim with it pretty eas­ily. We have to be more dis­ci­plined and bet­ter defen­sively to stop those runs.” Still, the Golden Eagles wouldn’t go away. Kil­bourne led by 17, 46–29, after three peri­ods, but Big Wal­nut found more shot oppor­tu­ni­ties in the final period and chopped its deficit down to just eight points, 52–44, with 93 sec­onds left. In the final moments, though, the Eagles were forced to foul in the hope Kil­bourne would miss their foul shots. They didn’t. Kil­bourne went 17 of 23 from the foul line in the final quar­ter and hit their final 13 free tosses of the game to lock down the win. Senior Adam Sha­heen had the hottest hand of any of the Golden Eagles, fin­ish­ing with a game-high 25 points on the night. Senior Zach Laugh­man and junior Nick Her­bert added a pair of threes each and sopho­more Zach Asher had three buck­ets, all three play­ers adding six points apiece. Kil­bourne 6–5 wing Ryan Adolph led the way for the Wolves with 18 points, while 6–5 post Michael Cham­bers added 13 points. Seth Hill also had 10 for the visitors.

“If we just keep plug­ging away and keep chop­ping wood, those things will start going our way,” Myers said. “We’re play­ing a lot of Divi­sion I teams right now, but we need to remem­ber that at the end of the sea­son we get to go to the Divi­sion II tournament.”

OLENTANGY 78, BIG WALNUT 42 — The Braves used a huge first half to set the tone, han­dling the Golden Eagles in an Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion vic­tory Fri­day in Lewis Center.

Olen­tangy (8–6, 6–2 OCC) outscored the Golden Eagles (5–10, 1–7 OCC) 25–11 in the open­ing period and 17–10 in the sec­ond quar­ter to take a 42–21 lead into the inter­mis­sion. The Braves fin­ished strong as well, win­ning the third quar­ter 14–11 and the fourth 22–10 to com­plete their win­ning performance.

Seth Clark led Olen­tangy with 21 points while Tyler Sobieray fin­ished with 13 and Jim Gundling 11 in the win.

Big Wal­nut was paced by Adam Shaheen’s 14 points. Chaase LaVeer, count­ing two of the Golden Eagles’ three treys, fol­lowed with 8 points.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.