Cardington tips off BB season at Harding

By ROB HAMILTON

With a young team, Card­ing­ton boys’ bas­ket­ball coach Rod Brown is look­ing for his play­ers to gain expe­ri­ence as quickly as possible.

This past week­end, the squad was able to get two games at the Kory Kirk­patrick Tip-Off Clas­sic hosted by Mar­ion Harding.

The event, named in honor of a for­mer Mar­ion Hard­ing player who passed away in a 2011 auto acci­dent, con­sisted of the host school, Ash­land, Card­ing­ton and Elgin.

While the Pirates fin­ished fourth in the event, los­ing to Hard­ing on Fri­day and Elgin on Sat­ur­day, Brown felt hav­ing games on back-to-back days could help his team.

“We have a lot of work to do in a short span,” he said. “We have to learn soon. (Play­ing two games in two days) It gives us a shot to pre­pare for an oppo­nent with­out work­ing on them in practice.”

One thing Brown learned about his team is that they need to work to improve on offense, as they suf­fered through lengthy droughts in both games.

On Fri­day, the Pirates got in a huge early hole against Hard­ing, coached by for­mer Card­ing­ton men­tor Roger Jury, and never quite recov­ered in suf­fer­ing a 69–45 loss.

With the score tied 2–2 in the first quar­ter, Hard­ing got nine straight points to take the lead. They increased their advan­tage to a 20–6 mar­gin after eight min­utes of play and led by as much as 26 points in the sec­ond quarter.

“They came out more aggres­sively and we didn’t answer,” said Brown. “They got a lot of tran­si­tion points and we didn’t shoot very well — I knew that’d be the big thing.”

How­ever, the Pirates would fight back, fin­ish­ing the half on a 12–3 run. Card­ing­ton used bal­anced scor­ing to get within a 38–22 score, as Tyler How­ell, Pey­ton Bar­nett and Alex Taha all scored three points dur­ing that span.

Card­ing­ton con­tin­ued to fight back in the third quar­ter, get­ting four points from both How­ell and Bar­nett. They got as close as 12 points at 42–30 before end­ing the period down by 15.

It looked like Hard­ing would quickly pull away in the fourth quar­ter, as with the score 50–38 in their favor, they scored five straight points high­lighted by a three-pointer from Kodi Clark.

Card­ing­ton had one more run in them, though, as they scored five straight from the foul line to get back within 12. Unfor­tu­nately, they would not be able to get any closer, as the Pres­i­dents fin­ished the game on a 14–2 run to win comfortably.

“We just couldn’t get over the hump,” said Brown, who lamented his team only hit­ting 50 per­cent of its foul shots. “They’d foul us and we’d miss freee throws.”

Sebas­t­ian Walker scored 23 to lead Hard­ing, while Trey Kin­ney added 15, Clark scored 12 and Shawn Tyler II added nine.

For the Pirates, Bar­nett led the team with 12 points, while How­ell added nine.

In the other Fri­day game, Ash­land defeated Elgin 48–32 to set up Saturday’s contests.

In the third-place con­test, the Pirates suf­fered a 66–42 loss to the Comets. Card­ing­ton led early in the game, but Elgin took con­trol of the game in the sec­ond period and didn’t look back.

Back­court inex­pe­ri­ence was a prob­lem for Card­ing­ton. One of the team’s few return­ing var­sity play­ers, Mitch Yake, was out with an injury for the week­end and start­ing point guard How­ell strug­gled with foul trou­ble after the first quarter.

Dur­ing that first quar­ter, the Pirates led most of the way. How­ell scored six points and Zach Wells added four more as the Pirates led by as much as a 14–6 mar­gin before tak­ing a 16–13 lead into the second.

Bar­nett hit two free throws to open the sec­ond quar­ter, but the Pirates wouldn’t score again for four min­utes. Dur­ing that span, the Comets went on a 15-point run to take the lead. While the Pirates got within seven points twice in the quar­ter, they trailed by a 39–26 mar­gin at the half.

“We just have no flow,” said Brown. “Our lack of experience…I’m not say­ing it as an excuse, but it keeps com­ing up. We were attack­ing the mid­dle and get­ting good shots and it just stopped. Our shot selec­tion is poor.”

Wells opened the third quar­ter with a bas­ket that brought Card­ing­ton within 11, but the team would not get any closer. Elgin was able to increase their lead to as many as 20 points in this period before going on to win by 24.

In the cham­pi­onship game, Ash­land topped the host school by a 49–29 mark — a per­for­mance that led to the Arrows dom­i­nat­ing the All-Tournament team.

Drew Delaney of Ash­land was the tour­na­ment MVP, while both Isaac White and Trey Smith were All-Tournament picks, as were Kin­ney and Walker of Hard­ing and Justin Spauld­ing of Elgin.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.