by High School Sports coverage at Kee On Sports is brought to you by these fine sponsors – https://keeonsports.com/sponsors/
This coverage is brought to you by Gables Search Group: You can hear more about them here https://keeonsports.podbean.com/e/gables-search/
CHARDON, Ohio– A strong second half performance led by Eric Stern and Rico Pickett were too much to handle for NDCL, as the Warriors improved their record to 2-1 following a 74-53 win Saturday night.
The 6’8″ Stern was able to use his size to his advantage all throughout the second half. He was able to get the offense into the transition game by forcing turnovers, which head coach Kevin Byrne said his team thrived in during the win.
“We did make a conscious decision to try to turn the game into a 94-foot game as opposed to a halfcourt game,” Byrne said. “We’ll try different things as the game goes and it seemed like when we went to that it worked.”
Stern led the way with 22 points for the Warriors– including 13 points in the third quarter alone. Pickett added in 20 points along with Kole Kuczynski pouring in 14.
NDCL was able to play tight most of the first half, despite Walsh breaking off scoring runs that lead to a double-digit deficit for the Lions. Jaiden Mangelluzzi paced the offense with seven points in the first two quarters, as they were faced with a 34-24 deficit at halftime.
Walsh Jesuit was able to outscore the Lions 24-13 in the third quarter, including opening up the first four and a half minutes on a 12-5 scoring run. NDCL’s Owen Redmond connected on back-to-back 3-pointers following the Lions timeout, but the play of Stern inside the paint was too much to contain.
Add on turnovers from the full-court press and Walsh was able to push away with a 21-point lead after the third quarter.
“If you take average or bad shots on offense, it’s going to lead to transition opportunities,” NDCL head coach Nate Vander Sluis said about Walsh capitalizing scoring opportunities in transition. “It’s something that we’ve worked on a couple days in practice but we really haven’t had enough time to make it clean and make it sharp.
NDCL had five players score Saturday night. Mangelluzzi ended the night with a team-high 10 points. Redmond added in nine and Noah Coyne rounded out the scoring with eight points. Vander Sluis liked the effort his guys showed him Saturday night, with it being the team’s first game of the season after.
“We’re not happy with the result but the way the game went I’ll take all day,” he said. “We were shut down for two weeks and got one practice in on Friday. So with all that put together, I’ll take tonight because our guys stayed together, fought and really competed.”
As for coach Byrne and the Warriors, he was pleased with how his team was able to bounce back following a 51-69 loss to St. Ignatius on Dec. 2. It was a needed win for his guys after starting the season off with an impressive win against Copley.
“We wanted to bounce back and play good ball, I’m happy with where we’re at,” he said. “We have an off week now and we have to be ready to go for next week.”
