Indians eliminated from playoffs by Johnstown

By ROB HAMILTON

An incred­i­ble offen­sive per­for­mance by Johnstown’s William Orr led to an early exit from the boys’ bas­ket­ball play­offs for Mount Gilead Saturday.

Orr scored 36 points in lead­ing his Johnny team past the Indi­ans by a 56–50 mar­gin. While no other player for John­stown scored more than six points, that big game by Orr was enough to advance them past Mount Gilead.

“He’s the best shooter I’ve seen in a long time,” said Mount Gilead coach Tom Cooper of Orr. “I was just hop­ing we could have done a bit bet­ter in mak­ing it hard on him.”

Orr scored 18 points for John­stown in the first half, but the Indi­ans led 27–20 thanks to a strong sec­ond quarter.

Despite get­ting four points each from Ethan Har­ris and Logan Chap­man, Mount Gilead trailed 12–11 after eight min­utes of play. How­ever, Har­ris opened the period with a put­back and Pay­ton Van­derkooi added a three-pointer to give the Indi­ans a four-point lead.

Lead­ing 19–18 with three min­utes to play in the period, Mount Gilead went on an 8–2 run sparked by four points from Har­ris and a basket-and-free throw combo from Van­derkooi to take the lead into the locker room.

That lead would be short-lived, though. Orr opened the half with a three-pointer and Cody Far­ley added back-to-back bas­kets to knot the game at 27.

“We told them at half­time that who­ever won the four-minute war out of half­time would win the game and, unfor­tu­nately, John­stown won it,” said Cooper.

After tak­ing a 30-second time­out, the Indi­ans regained the lead on a Har­ris bas­ket. The action was back-and-forth for the rest of the quar­ter, with Mount Gilead going up by a 34–33 mar­gin at the end of hte period after Xavier Har­ris stole the ball and drove for a lay-up, was fouled and hit his free throw.

John­stown would start the fourth quar­ter much like they did the third, though, scor­ing the first five points of the period to take a 38–34 lead.

The Indi­ans got a bas­ket and free throw from Xavier Har­ris and a three-pointer from Van­derkooi to tie things up at 40–40, but a three-and-a-half minute scor­ing drought allowed the John­nies to move in front by seven.

While the Indi­ans tried to fight back down the stretch, they were unable to erase that deficit com­pletely. Late three-pointers by Nic Pomeroy, Mike Chat­field and Van­derkooi helped bring the team within a 52–50 mar­gin with 14 sec­onds to play, but John­stown made four free throws down the stretch and the Indi­ans would not score again.

Cooper noted that while his team gave a strong effort in their final game, they sim­ply didn’t shoot well from the floor.

“We tell the guys all the time to work hard on lay-ups and free throws because games come down to them, but we missed too many,” he said. “We played hard all night. I told the guys I was proud of our effort. We played extremely hard — unfor­tu­nately, John­stown plahyed better.”

For the Indi­ans, Van­derkooi scored a team-high 15, while Ethan Har­ris scored 13 and Xavier Har­ris added eight.

The team, which fin­ished its sea­son with a 16–7 mark, will grad­u­ate Van­derkooi, Ethan Har­ris, Pomeroy, Chap­man and Chat­field — giv­ing the younger play­ers some big shoes to fill. Cooper noted that those seniors, includ­ing four-year var­sity play­ers Van­derkooi and Ethan Har­ris, who were part of more total wins than any group in school his­tory, did a lot to improve the program.

“We’re proud of these seniors,” he said. “They’ve shown these younger guys what it’s like to be win­ners. Hope­fully, we can keep build­ing on it and get the pro­gram where we want it to be.”

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.