by The St. Ed’s Eagles survived a late rally to come away with the 59-47 road win at Lakewood tonight. The Eagles were led by Drew Yurcich with 14 while JT Kelsheimer and Bryan Vlosich each had 11. Nate Yurcich scored 8 while Anthony Noar had 5 and Boden Grant put in 4. The Eagle scoring was rounded out from Ian Murray and Zymir Knox who both had 2.
The Eagles spread out the scoring on their end, with 8 different players chalking up the score sheets. Coach Flannery touched on the total team effort as well here. “That is who we are, JT, Brian, Drew, Nate, we have guys who can shoot the ball. What always goes unnoticed is the little moments, with big plays by our seniors. Especially Marty McGlynn and Anthony Noar who came and had a few key plays to extend our league. Those are the types of plays and moments we need to be good.”
The Rangers had a rough go of it in the first half, but Lucas Seguine finished strong with 19 of his team high 22 coming in the second half. Luke Vannucci, Luke Bonvissuto and Riley Verderber each had 4 while Joe Dolan had 3.
St. Ed’s began the game on a quick 10-4 run before it was stopped by a Brady Long Ranger bucket. The Eagles responded by scoring 6 of the quarters final 7 points, with all 6 of those points coming from the hot hand of Nate Yurcich. The first was a three-point play, and the next was a shot from deep.
Five points from Anthony Noar got the Eagles cooking early in the second quarter. A Vlosich three ball made it 24-9 and gave the Eagles a 24-9 lead with 5:59 to play in the half. From there, a JT Kelsheimer three extended the lead to 27-10 before a Ranger made three from Joe Dolan cooled the Eagles for a moment. The score at the break was Eagles leading 34-15.
The Eagles defense was suffocating in the first half and kept the Ranger shooting at bay. The Rangers were held shooting just 6 of 21 shooting in the first half, and just 1 of 9 from long range. I spoke with St. Ed’s head coach Eric Flannery who had this to say afterwards, “I think focus helped us after the hot start they had last year, this year we knew they had two guys who could score and our general focus was stop those two and I thought we did a tremendous job in the first half. We became a little bit complacent in the second half and took some quick poor shots while getting a bit lazy on defense in moments. I think we won tonight because of out early defense and that is something to build upon. “
The second half was a bit of different story however, as after an nearly even third quarter that saw the Rangers cut into the lead only by two points, 46-29 after three quarters, the Rangers began the fourth quarter on a 8-2 run. From there, Lucas Seguine nailed several threes, and cut it to 53-47 with 2 minutes left. After six strong minutes, the Eagles defense cooled the Ranger shooting once more, and held on for the 59-47 victory.
