By Jeff Higley – Palladium-Item
NEW PARIS, Ohio
Great teams go a little deeper. You can put Tri-Village in the latter category after Friday’s 77-67 Cross County Conference win over National Trail.
The Patriots, playing without two starters, overcame a slow start to run their record to 19-0 overall and 9-0 in the CCC.
“These kids really responded,” T-V coach Lee Falknor said. “I can’t praise them enough. We did what we do and when we’re at the top of our game, we do it well. We were approaching excellent tonight.”
“This ought to show them right here that it’s not one guy that makes that team go,” National Trail coach Stan Sanderson said after his team dropped to 11-7 and 7-3.
Starting center Scoob Cook was out with an ankle injury suffered in practice earlier this week while starting point guard Dirk Lewis was out for disciplinary reasons.
But the Patriots didn’t miss a beat in ringing up their 42nd consecutive regular season victory dating back to 1989. Lee Brandon filled in for Lewis and responded with a 16-point, eight-rebound performance while Fisherback replaced Cook and had six points.
Randy Ward led the Patriots with 22 points – he was eight-of-nine from the field – while Nate Lindamood added 21 and Shane Bietry 10.
National Trail, which got two rousing dunks late in the game by Jamie Yount and Darren Deboo, was paced by Yount’s 18 points. Travis Miller and DeBoo each added 11.
Brandon’s role, however, is deceiving. He’s not a starter but sees plenty of action and averages 10.2 points per game.
“I can’t say about the job he does,” Falknor said, “with him, I think I have the best six players in Darke County.”
“They played better without those two guys,” Sanderson said. “They knew they had to run their offense that much harder without them and they zipped through their offense all night. The kids he brings off the bench don’t score a lot by they don’t make mistakes, either,” Sanderson added.
Mistakes were plentiful for the Blazers, who were bothered by the Patriots’ press and turned the ball over 27 times.
“We work on that,” Sanderson said. “We have press breakers and passing drills but we still don’t seem to be getting better at reading the press.”
“We were just quicker then they were,” Falknor said.
National Trail got off to a quick start, building an 18-11 first quarter lead at one point. The Blazers were able to work the ball inside – 15 of their points came inside the paint.
“With cook out we went to our 1-2-1-1 zone and we never got it going,” Falknor said. “Then we went to the man-to-man.”
The switch, along with some heavy-duty fullcourt pressure, worked as Tri-Village used a 16-2 spurt in the second quarter to erase the deficit and gain a 29-23 advantage.
National Trail contributed to the run by committing five turnovers in a two-minute span.
“I used two timeouts to try to get them settled down and to remind them that we wanted to keep it a halfcourt game as much as possible,” Sanders said. “When we took advantage of height, we had the lead.”
Tri-Village held a 33-28 halftime lead but erupted for 17 of the first 23 points of the third quarter to take command 50-34.
That was Patriots’ largest lead but they were never seriously threatened after it. The Blazers managed to close the gap to six points once in the fourth quarter on a Brian Waltz six-footer but Tri-Village responded with a Lewis free throw and a Lewis fast break layup off of a steal to regain the momentum.
Tri-Village closes out the regular season tonight at home against Mississinawa Valley. Lewis will play but Cook’s status is unclear as the Patriots try for their second straight unbeaten regular season.
“In the back of my mind, I wanted him to play tonight,” Falknor said of Cook. “But as long as we maintained the lead, I needed to keep him out and not take any chances. We’ll decide if he’ll play (against MV) closer to game time. If the ankle improves as much as it did in the last 24 hours, I think he’ll play some.”
Scoring by Quarters
Tri-Village 13 20 22 22 – 77
National Trail 18 15 16 23 – 67
Tri-Village
Lindamood - 21
Brandon - 16
Ward - 22
Bietry - 10
Fisherback - 6
Baker - 2
Wicker - 0
Totals - 77
National Trail
Miller - 11
Waltz - 3
Yount - 18
DeBoo - 11
Kemp - 7
Mason - 9
Pearson - 8
Laird - 0
Totals - 67
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