by The North Olmsted Eagles won their home opener tonight in exciting fashion over the visiting Valley Forge Patriots 62-42 . The leading scorer for North Olmsted was junior Dylon Susan who had 22 points, all coming in the second half, including 15 of those points coming from long distance. This is truly remarkable considering he saw minutes in the JV game where he hit 7 more three pointers for a one-night total of 12. All in all, Sudan had 49 total points in a few hours’ time. Folks, if this was NBA Jam, the ball literally would have been on fire!
The Eagles outscored the Patriots 36-15 in the second half to pull away with the victory. Also doing plenty of damage for the Eagles tonight was Naoki Sato with 11 points while Matthew Bloomfield and Tyler Zatta had 8 each. It was Nick Tepper putting up 5 as Eggie Cordero finished with 4. Rounding out the scoring for the Eagles was Austin Limpert with 3 and Donavan Martin with 2. These points combined with strong defensive efforts from Anthony D’Alessandro and Rayyan Hamdallah kept the visiting Patriots in check.
The Patriots were led by Cook with 14 and Nick Mankins with 9.
It was a tremendous defensive effort late for the home team, as after giving up 18 first quarter points, they settled down and The Eagles held the Patriots to only 15 second half points total after a 27-27 tie at halftime, as they went on to put the game away. Second year North Olmsted Head Coach Kyle Johnson had this to say about their effort, “We finally started to sit down and guard people. We played with more energy. Our effort in the first half wasn’t there and that’s why we gave up 18 first quarter points”.
The Eagles are back in action this Friday night as they travel to Elyria Catholic, meanwhile the Patriots look to bounce back as they host Lakewood next Tuesday.
Cover photo credit to Steven Stanley
