Knights ride fast start to win

By ROB HAMILTON

A fast start by Northmor’s offense helped lead the Knights to a 71–59 win over Card­ing­ton in a road con­test last Thursday.

Four three-pointers by James Don­ner sparked North­mor to a 20–9 lead after eight min­utes of play and the Pirates would be unable to erase that deficit.

Two bas­kets by Tyler How­ell staked Card­ing­ton to an early 4–3 advan­tage, but a Don­ner three fol­lowed by a dri­ving bas­ket from Zach Wise­man put the Knights up 8–4.

Mitchell Yake drew a foul and hit one-of-two shots to bring his team within three points, but North­mor responded with a nine-point run.

Both Gar­rett Karcher and Wise­man hit bas­kets and free throws to com­plete old-fashioned three-point plays before Don­ner stepped behind the arc and added three more to give his team a 17–5 advantage.

While both Pey­ton Bar­nett and Yake hit bas­kets down down the stretch in the first quar­ter for Card­ing­ton, Don­ner hit another three-pointer, so they were only able to trim one point off the North­mor lead.

“That’s been the big thing for us — get­ting down early,” said Card­ing­ton coach Rod­ney Brown.

Knight coach Zach Ruth noted that he and his staff have been notic­ing a lot of good scor­ing pro­duc­tion from Don­ner recently — some­thing he con­sid­ers a big key to the team hav­ing success.

“That start con­tributed to the out­come of the win,” said Ruth. “We put a lot of pres­sure on James Don­ner because when he can stretch the defense like this, we’re tough to beat. He has 18 three-pointers in three games.”

North­mor con­tin­ued to pull away early in the sec­ond quar­ter, get­ting bas­kets by Daniel Don­ner and Karcher, as well as two free throws from Wise­man, to boost their lead to a 26–9 margin.

While the Pirates would wake up offen­sively in the sec­ond quar­ter, they would only be able to close within 12 points at 38–26 by the half. A Barry John­ston three-pointer got Card­ing­ton started on a 17–12 run that ended the half. Eight dif­fer­ent Pirates scored dur­ing that stretch.

Unfor­tu­nately for Card­ing­ton, they would not be able to con­tinue chip­ping away at their deficit in the third quar­ter. With the score 45–32 mid­way through the period, North­mor got both a tech­ni­cal foul free throw and bas­ket from James Don­ner and a three-pointer from Wise­man to go up by 19.

While Yake drained a pair of free throws in the wan­ing sec­onds of the third, the Pirates still trailed by 17 enter­ing the final period.

“We knew James and Zach could shoot the ball,” said Brown. “I thought we did pretty good on Zach, but James killed us.”

The Pirates would make a fourth quar­ter run to add some sus­pence to the game, though. Trail­ing 53–36 with six min­utes to play, they got back-to-back threes from John­ston, as well as inside shots from Tyler Dornon and How­ell, to get within seven points with 4:33 to play.

“We were up 17 and had a cou­ple guys in foul trou­ble and went to the bench, who gave up eight points,” said Ruth. “To win more games, we need more pro­duc­tion from our bench.”

Card­ing­ton was able to stay close until the final four min­utes. Then, with the score 56–49 in favor of North­mor, the Knights got two free throws from James Don­ner and a three-pointer from Daniel Don­ner to go up by 12. Card­ing­ton would not get closer than nine the rest of the way.

North­mor hit 10-of-11 free throws over those final four min­utes to clinch the game. Ruth noted that hit­ting shots from the char­ity stripe has been a strong point for his team this season.

“The one stat that’s been amaz­ing is that through 11 games, we’re shoot­ing 75 per­cent from the line and were 22–27 tonight.”

James Don­ner led all scor­ers with 20 points, while Karcher added 16, Wise­man scored 14 and Daniel Don­ner fin­ished with 12. For Cardingotn, both How­ell and Yake tal­lied 11 points, while John­ston added nine and Mason Richard­son fin­ished with eight.

For Card­ing­ton, Brown feels that his team just needs to find a way to get out to faster starts.

“You can’t hang your heads,” he said. “We started slow, but scored 25 in the fourth. But when you start slow, you have to waste a lot of energy com­ing back. We’ve done that a lot and it’s hurt us.”

In the North­mor locker room, Ruth is hop­ing that his team can get some momen­tum now after get­ting off to a slow start against some tough competition.

“Any time you get a win on the road in the MOAC, it’s good,” he said. “At one time, we were 2–8 and the teams that had beaten us had a (com­bined) record of 38–5 or some­thing like that.”

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Jan 16 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.