by CLEVELAND, Ohio– St. Ignatius held the size advantage Thursday night and that proved to be a factor down the stretch, leading to a 66-51 win for coach Cam Joyce and his Wildcats.
“We feel like we had the advantage on size and on the road, we always say to play inside out,” Joyce said. “We just wanted to get easy baskets at first and I thought we did a good job at times.”
It was the Damon Friery show in the first quarter. His size without Falcon star junior TJ Crumble made a difference Thursday night, especially in the first half. The Wildcats used its full-court press to create a slew of loose ball turnovers early, resulting in easy baskets for the Wildcats, including Friery’s couple of dunks.
“We knew they were young and we had to take advantage of them,” Friery said after the win.
The Wildcats never trailed. Tyrone Harrison made an impact for the Falcons early and often, scoring all 11 of the team’s points six minutes into the game. The Wildcats held a 20-13 lead after the first quarter and it continued to grow, this time from Kalli Johnson’s impact offensively.
He scored 10 points in the first half for his team, helping maintain a marginal lead for the remainder of the first half. The Falcons were never out of it though, as freshman Dylan Zeigler started to gain his confidence. He ended the first half with a 3-pointer at the buzzer with his team trailing 35-30 at the break.
The message at halftime for Joyce and his team; to find his shooters the ball and take advantage of the rebounds.
It’s safe to say they answered that call.
In the third quarter, the Wildcats honed in on the defensive pressure and that forced the Falcons to try to get back in the game from behind the arc. The Wildcats would hold an eight-point lead heading into the fourth quarter.
“We allowed too many second-chance points and too many threes,” Joyce shared. “We just wanted to be better at getting to our shooters and getting rebounds.”
That’s when the game got out of hand for the Falcons. It took them three minutes to score their first points of the quarter, and at that point, they were already trailing by double digits.
A point of emphasis for Friery was the maintain a lead and extend it to as much as they could.
“When we get up early, we usually keep it but we got to work on extending those leads,” The Dayton commit said. “Instead of getting 12-15 point wins, we have to get 20-25-point wins.”
The Wildcats held the Falcons to just six points in the fourth quarter, where they often found themselves trying to out-shoot the Wildctas from 3-point range. For the game, the Falcons connected on seven 3-pointers. The impact players like Friery and senior point guard Quinn Woidke made was unmatched on the other side.
With them being both senior leaders, it’s important they control both sides of the ball on a nightly basis and they did just that. That even led to Kalli Johnson scoring 12 points. That was a needed spark for Joyce’s team that’s played a lot of basketball on the road this season.
“Those are the leaders, both captains. They got the most experience coming back from the team last year,” Joyce said. “We want them to score but leadership is really important to them.”
During the win, Friery paced the offense with a game-high 25 points. Johnson added 14 along with 12 points from Jimmy Thomas and seven from Woidke.
For the Falcons, Tyrone Harrison paced the offense with 16 points followed by 12 from Ziegle and 11 from DJ Jenkins.
