Mt. Gilead surges past Pirates in third quarter

By ROB HAMILTON

For 18 min­utes, Cardington’s bas­ket­ball team had done what it needed to do in order to hang with Mount Gilead on the road on Friday.

Unfor­tu­nately for the Pirates, it was the next seven min­utes which proved to decide the game — a 63–50 win by the Indians.

After Card­ing­ton opened the third quar­ter with a three-pointer from Tyler Dornon and a steal and bas­ket from Tyler How­ell, they led 32–30 with about six min­utes remain­ing in the period.

Over the rest of the third and the first minute of the fourth, Mount Gilead would go on a 18–0 run, though, which turned Cardington’s two-point lead into a 16-point deficit they would not be able to overcome.

“We scored five points in the third,” said Pirate coach Rod Brown. “Good teams make shots when they’re open. We had a lot of open looks and missed them and you can’t miss those.”

“We knew it’d be hard,” said Mount Gilead’s coach, Tom Cooper. “It’s a Mount Gilead-Cardington game, so the kids came to bat­tle. I chal­lenged them at half­time to pick up the defen­sive inten­sity and the kids did a good job.”

Michael Bland started the Indian run with a bas­ket and Nic Pomeroy added a quick three-pointer. Ethan Har­ris added four points and Pay­ton Van­derkooi opened the fourth quar­ter with a three that gave the Indi­ans a 48–32 lead with seven min­utes of time remain­ing on the clock.

Card­ing­ton would get as close as a 10-point mar­gin, but the Indi­ans would not let them get within sin­gle dig­its as they held on for the win.

Cooper noted that his team sim­ply exe­cuted bet­ter on both offense and defense in the sec­ond half.

“We played straight man-to-man in the third quar­ter and didn’t turn the ball over as much,” said the coach. “We did a bet­ter job get­ting out on their three-point shooters.”

The Indi­ans got out to a fast start in the game, but Card­ing­ton ral­lied in the final moments of the first quar­ter. Five points by Nic Pomeroy and four each from Ethan Har­ris and Logan Chap­man gave Mount Gilead a 15–8 lead, but the Pirates got five from Dor­nan in the final minute of the period to help them get within a 15–14 margin.

The Indi­ans surged back in the sec­ond quar­ter, open­ing the period on a 9–3 run, get­ting three-pointers from both Chris God­frey and Pomeroy.

How­ever, the Pirates came back again, scor­ing eight straight points, six by Dornon, to take their first lead of the game at 25–24.

The game would be dead­locked at 27–27 with time run­ning out in the period, but Har­ris broke the tie with a buzzer-beating three.

“We said at half­time to go to Tyler Dornon and see if he’s still hot and he hit a three,” said Brown. “Then we got a lay-up and then didn’t score for seven minutes.”

Brown wasn’t the only coach won­der­ing what was going wrong dur­ing cer­tain points in the game. On the other bench, Cooper was dis­pleased by his team’s trou­bles with tak­ing care of the ball, not­ing that turnovers played a role in the game’s closeness.

“It’s some­thing we’ve talked about,” said the coach. “We get care­less with the bas­ket­ball — we gave away too many pos­ses­sions tonight.”

For Card­ing­ton, Dornon led all scor­ers with 20 points, while How­ell added nine and Mason Richard­son picked up eight. After the game, Brown noted that his team has played some tough teams closely, but just needs to find a way to pick up wins in those games.

“That’s a ques­tion we ask our­selves every day,” said the coach. “We’re here and play­ing with them and we have to find a way to get over the hump.”

Mount Gilead got 14 from both Pomeroy and Har­ris. Xavier Har­ris added 13, while Chap­man fin­ished with eight. Twelve of Pomeroy’s points came from three-point shots — some­thing which pleased Cooper.

“Nic Pomeroy really shot the ball well,” he said. “You have to like it when a senior steps up in a big rivalry game.”

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Feb 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.