BW survives late Johnstown run in 55-50 boys basketball win

By ERIC CLINE

For The Sun­bury News

NEWARK — The Big Wal­nut boys bas­ket­ball team caused a few chewed fin­ger­nails and some frayed nerves, but still sent the fans home happy.

The Golden Eagles led by 12 points in the fourth quar­ter, but had to hold off a John­stown run in the final five min­utes to sur­vive with a 55–50 vic­tory over the John­nies at the First Fed­eral Hol­i­day Clas­sic Fri­day night at Newark Catholic High School.

Big Wal­nut (4–4), who faced host Newark Catholic in Saturday’s cham­pi­onship game (see related story), needed its defense late in the game. The Golden Eagles led 47–35 with five min­utes left in the game only to see John­stown (5–3) go on a 15–6 run in the next four min­utes to cut the advan­tage to three points.

“We had a 12-point lead, but we got a lit­tle pas­sive on offense, try­ing to grind it,” Big Wal­nut coach Eric Myers said. “We had a cou­ple of bad passes and some turnovers, and John­stown kept play­ing hard and got back into it.”

But, thanks to the Big Wal­nut defense, the John­nies would not score again. The John­nies got off a poten­tial game-tying three-point attempt late in the game that rimmed off, and senior Adam Sha­heen pulled down the rebound, was fouled, and hit two foul shots with 6.6 sec­onds left to seal the win.

Early on, the Golden Eagles were solid, scor­ing 13 points on their first 10 shots of the game and hold­ing a 13–7 lead, but Johnstown’s William Orr kept his crew in the mix, scor­ing 12 of the John­nies’ 16 first-quarter points.

But with both junior Chase LaVeer and sopho­more Michael Buck­les on defense, Orr was held score­less in the sec­ond quar­ter and had just nine points the rest of the way.

“Chase is a first-year var­sity player and he’s com­ing into his own defen­sively,” Myers said. “Orr lit it up in the first half and we didn’t have an answer for him in the first quar­ter, but Chase and Michael Buck­les took turns on him after that and both did a nice job for us.”

That allowed Big Wal­nut to expand its lead. The Golden Eagles led 20–16 after the first period, but used a 13–4 run to take a 13-point, 33–20 lead with just under three min­utes left in the half.

John­stown would cut the lead back to nine, 35–26, at the break and still trailed by nine, 44–35, and when the Golden Eagles scored the first three points of the fourth, it appeared Big Wal­nut would con­trol the rest of the game, but the free throw line almost proved their downfall.

Big Wal­nut was 5 of 9 (55.6 per­cent) from the line in the final quar­ter and hit just three of their first seven foul shots in the period. The Eagles also com­mit­ted five turnovers in the final quar­ter, help­ing John­stown on its run.

“That’s one of the things we’re start­ing to expe­ri­ence with our young team,” Myers said. “We need to be able to hold on to a lead, grind a lit­tle and make free throws late in the game. We have to do a bet­ter job down the stretch mak­ing our free throws.”

After trad­ing points for the next two min­utes or so, John­stown ran off six straight points in a span of 74 sec­onds to trim the Golden Eagle edge to three, 53–50, with 1:05 left. Big Wal­nut missed the front end of a one-and-one, giv­ing John­stown the ball with a chance to tie with 20 sec­onds to go.

But the Golden Eagle defense kept the ball away from Orr. Johnstown’s Jason Carter got off a three with a man in his face, but Sha­heen pulled in the rebound and hit his two foul shots that cemented Big Walnut’s place in the title game.

Senior Zach Laugh­man led the Golden Eagle scor­ing with 16 points, includ­ing two of the team’s three threes on the night. Sha­heen had a solid game as well, clos­ing with 15 points and a game-high 12 rebounds.

Buck­les added 10 points for Big Wal­nut while junior Logan Boyd added seven points and three assists. LaVeer also added four points and three assists.

“Adam had a good ball­game putting up a double-double,” Myers said. “I felt he did a good job for us tonight. Buck had a good game offen­sively, and we’ve talked about Logan cre­at­ing some more shots. He’s a good shooter and he can give us some good second-line scoring.”

Orr fin­ished with his game-high 21 points for John­stown, while J.D. Arnold added 13 points. Carter and Justin Bush had eight points each for the John­nies, Carter lead­ing his squad with 10 rebounds.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 2 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.