Hayes boys shake slow start, run past Eagles, 53-37

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

The Pac­ers looked to their defense early … until their offense found its stride.

Delaware Hayes, trail­ing the host Golden Eagles 49 sec­onds into the sec­ond quar­ter, closed the open­ing half with a 12–0 run to take a 23–15 half­time lead en route to a 53–37 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion deci­sion over Big Wal­nut on Win­ter Home­com­ing Night Sat­ur­day night in Sun­bury. Trail­ing the Golden Eagles 15–11 on senior Adam Shaheen’s drive down the lane, the Pac­ers pulled even at 15–15 on suc­ces­sive bas­kets by junior for­ward Gaige Linville and junior guard Rom­mell Toran with 4:28 left in the first quarter.

From that point on, it was all Hayes as the Pac­ers scored 12 unan­swered points fol­low­ing Shaheen’s bas­ket — BW’s lone goal of the quar­ter, on the Golden Eagles’ Win­ter Home­com­ing night.

With the Pacer defense forc­ing 7 turnovers in Big Walnut’s final 11 pos­ses­sions of the sec­ond quar­ter, Hayes (10–4, 6–2 OCC) closed the half with an 8–0 run capped by a layin and a 3-point bas­ket at the buzzer from senior guard Mike Wells to take a 23–15 lead into the intermission.

After the game, Hayes head coach Jor­dan Black­burn said he and his staff had the Pac­ers focus­ing on defense dur­ing their last three prac­tices prior to Saturday’s game.

“We were focus­ing on con­tain­ing (senior guard Zach) Laugh­man and Sha­heen,” Black­burn said, “And we were pretty suc­cess­ful thanks to the play of Mike and Khalil (Iver­son) along with Tyler (Treese) off the bench.

Unfor­tu­nately our offense was strug­gling against Big Walnut’s aggres­sive zone … until Gaige and Toran hit those two bas­kets, bas­kets which gave us the momen­tum we were look­ing for.”

Big Wal­nut (5–11, 1–8 OCC) was no closer than 7 points of the lead in the sec­ond half. After clos­ing the mar­gin to 7 at 26–19 on two free throws by sopho­more Michael Buck­les with 6:35 left in the third period, Hayes, drilling six con­sec­u­tive shots from the field, unleashed a 19–7 run to take a 19-point, 45–26 lead into the final 8 minutes.

Iver­son, who scored 7 points in the spree, ignited the Pacer attack with a rebound bas­ket and layin. Sopho­more Noble counted a three and Wells fin­ished the run with a pair of baskets.

“Once Delaware finds its offen­sive rhythm, its dif­fi­cult to slow them down,” Big Wal­nut head coach Eric Myers said. “Wells hit his stride and Iver­son took con­trol inside in the sec­ond half … and we didn’t have an answer.”

Wells led Delaware with a game-high 20 points on 7 field goals, includ­ing a pair of threes. Iver­son fol­lowed with 13 and senior for­ward Grif­fin Kin­ney with 10 points. The Pac­ers shot 46.7 per­cent (21-for-45), adding 7 of 10 free throws (70.0 percent).

Big Wal­nut was led by Sha­heen, the lone Golden Eagle in dou­ble fig­ures with 16 points. Sopho­more Zach Asher fol­lowed with 8 points while junior Nick Her­bert and Buck­les added 5 points apiece.

Laugh­man, BW’s out­side shoot­ing threat, was held to a sin­gle 3-point bas­ket which came in the open­ing minute of play.

For the game, the Golden Eagles were 15-for-49 (30.6 per­cent) from the field and 4-for-4 (100.0 per­cent) at the line.

The Pac­ers, led by the 6-foot-4 Iverson’s 9 rebounds, claimed a 35–25 edge off the glass. Wells added 7 boards. The 6–6 Sha­heen cleared off 12 missed shots for the Golden Eagles.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.