Cardington boys hold off Highland in defensive battle

By ROB HAMILTON

While Cardington’s 39–38 Sat­ur­day night win over High­land may not have been a thing of beauty, it was the team’s third straight vic­tory after get­ting out to an 0–2 start — which made the end result very nice for head coach Rod Brown.

The Pirates with­stood mul­ti­ple second-half come­back bids from the Scots in hold­ing on to the win, which pushes them to 3–2, 2–0 in league play.

“We didn’t play much bet­ter tonight (than in the two losses,” said Brown. “We just made our free throws tonight.”

The Pirates had made 5-of-7 foul shots down the stretch in the fourth quar­ter before miss­ing two with seven sec­onds to play and a four-point lead. While the Scots were able to get a late three-pointer from Cur­tis Belcher, they would only be able to get within one point.

Brown felt that the way his play­ers bat­tled in the fourth quar­ter was key to the win.

“The kids played hard,” he said. “I was wor­ried because it seemed High­land had the momen­tum in the fourth quarter.”

Early in the game, it was tough for either team to string together enough bas­kets to gain that momen­tum. Belcher scored three bas­kets, one from long range, in the first quar­ter for the Scots. How­ever, none of his team­mates were able to light up the score­board, allow­ing the Pirates to take a 10–7 lead after eight minutes.

High­land coach Mike Hoyng noted that scor­ing with con­sis­tency is the biggest rea­son his team is now 0–4 on the season.

“That’s our biggest prob­lem,” he said. “We strug­gle get­ting the ball in the bas­ket at times — that’s been our M.O. this sea­son. At crit­i­cal times, we’re not step­ping up and we’re tak­ing bad shots.”

In the first quar­ter, eight of Cardington’s 10 points came from bas­kets by Tyler How­ell and Zach Wells. The team had more bal­anced scor­ing in the sec­ond quar­ter as they jumped out to a 19–9 lead.

Barry John­ston drained a three, while Wells, Pey­ton Bar­nett and Mason Richard­son also scored.

How­ever, in the final 1:37 of the quar­ter, the Scots made a run to trim that lead in half. After Jett Swet­land hit a free throw, both Shawn Beltz and Belcher scored from the field to make the score 19–14.

High­land con­tin­ued to bat­tle back in the third quar­ter. Trail­ing 23–17, the Scots made a run to tie the game thanks to a three-pointer by Belcher and a bas­ket and free throw by Swetland.

Card­ing­ton quickly got a bucket from John­ston and a Cole Hess three-pointer to regain the lead, but that would be short-lived.

High­land closed the period with a Ryan Burt three-pointer and two buck­ets by Byron Belcher. The sec­ond of his shots was a buzzer-beater that gave High­land a 30–28 lead — their first since the early stages of the first quarter.

After How­ell and Beltz traded bas­kets for their teams to open the fourth quar­ter, Card­ing­ton got back-to-back scores from Wells and How­ell to take a 34–32 lead.

While Card­ing­ton would not lose that lead over the final 4:47 of action, there was plenty of sus­pense over that time.

Swet­land hit a free throw to bring the Scots within one, but How­ell responded with two makes at the foul line to put his team up by three.

Swet­land scored on a put­back to get his team within one point again, but the Scots would wind up empty-handed on their next two trips down the floor. Card­ing­ton made enough free throws dur­ing that time to earn the win.

Brown felt his team improved a lot defen­sively since the open­ing week­end of the season.

“I think with our ‘D’, we were gam­bling a lot and over-pressing, which got our­selves in bad position,” he said about those early struggles.

Despite his team los­ing the game, Hoyng found some pos­i­tives — includ­ing the way his offense did come alive in the third quarter.

“We exe­cuted on offense and did what we were sup­posed to do,” he said. “When we don’t do that, we force things and take bad shots and we can’t do that. We’re just a lit­tle impa­tient right now.”

Cur­tis Belcher hit three three-pointers on his way to a game-high 19 points. For Card­ing­ton, Wells scored 13 and How­ell added 10.

After play­ing five games in a short period of time, the Pirates get a week off and won’t see action again until this com­ing Sat­ur­day; some­thing that pleases Brown.

“We get off our NBA sched­ule with five games in eight days and now get a break to get everyone’s health back to 100 per­cent,” he said.

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