Tyler Greer carved his way throught the Trojan defense for 20 points on the night as the Patriots rolled over Arcanum.
12/12/08
New Madison, Ohio
All week long the Patriots had prepared for a big game against the Trojans at the Battleground. “Our guys bought into the game plan and that was to play 88 feet we wanted to make sure we had them back on their heels and our guys were up to the challenge tonight,” said Coach Josh Sagester. “Our guard play was superb… we took them right out of their game and didn’t let them use their size tonight,” continued Sagester.
The effect of the pressure resulted in an early shellacking as Tri-Village built up a 20-3 first quarter lead.
However a last minute shot by Arcanum from three quarter court that bounced off the rafters gave the Trojans a gift to bring them to 20-6 to end the period.
Senior Tyler Greer carved up the Trojan defense working his way through the lane for 9 of the teams 20 points.
The Trojans opened the second quarter with a couple of baskets and looked like they had regained some composure.
A relentless defensive effort once again got the Patriots off and rolling as they raced to a 32-13 lead with two minutes to play in the half. The Patriots were scoring from all over the floor Cody Gunckel dropped in all 8 of his points to lead the way in the frame. A stick back by Brett Foreman at the buzzer gave the home team a lead of 36-17 at the half.
In the third period Arcanum did their best to try and get their big man involved in the game… Brenton Balsbaugh saddled with 3 fouls in the first half tried to get the inside game working but the Patriots did a nice job of bottling him up and frustrating him. “We have two big men and going in we knew we had 10 fouls to give, David Richards and Matt Miller did their job well tonight and used 9 of those 10 fouls and it frustrated him all night,” said Sagester. Balsbaugh would shoot just 3-for-10 from the foul line on the night.
While Arcanum was struggling to get any offense going, Tri-Village player Drew Moore took his turn to lead the Patriots. Moore would score 9 of his game high 24 points to extend their lead to 52-26.
In the final stanza Tri-Village would actually go up by 32 points holding a 65-33 lead with 2 minutes to play.
A few three-pointers by Arcanum helped them over the final few minutes to erase some of the pain and draw closer but the result was still the same a loss by the score of 66-44.
I can’t say enough about how well our kids played as a team tonight. Again we had positive contributions from everyone. Troy Pearson did some nice things for us. Heath West didn’t score much tonight but his defense on Braden Means was outstanding,” said Sagester.
“We talked as a team that tonight’s game was going to tell us whether we were pretenders or contenders, right now this team believes they are contenders and they proved it. We are making our home court a tough place to play,” concluded Sagester.
Tri-Village was led in scoring tonight by Drew Moore with 24 points. Tyler Greer would add 20 points while dishing out 4 assists. David Richards led the way with 8 rebounds and Brett Foreman stole 3 passes. The win raises the teams overall record to 3-0 and 2-0 in conference play. Tri-Village travels to Fort Recovery tomorrow night to take on the Indians in non-conference action.
In reserve action Tri-Village defeated Arcanum by the score of 41-33. Tyler Garland dropped in 18 points and Aaron Castle added 12. Colby Morris, Aaron Castle and Evan Barger each pulled down 8 rebounds as the junior varsity ran their record to 3-0 on the year.
