Ohio Locker Room - Falcons claim first win in SCOL battle with Trace

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Falcons claim first win in SCOL battle with Trace

Monday, 22 December 2008

By CHRIS HOPPES

Brown News Service

EBER — It was a meeting of two teams each looking for their first win of the season when the Clinton-Massie Falcons visited Miami Trace High School Saturday evening for a match-up in the South Central Ohio League.

Clinton-Massie won the game, 61-46.

Logan McCormick was the game’s leading scorer for Clinton-Massie with 22 points. Fellow senior Andrew Wysong added 12 points and junior Travis Amburgy was also in double figures with 10 points.

The Falcons are now 1-3 overall, 1-1 in the SCOL.

For the Panthers (0-3, 0-3), sophomore Isaiah Carson led with 17 points. Senior Brody Decker scored 10 points and senior Alex Marting had nine points.

“The thing I’m most happy with is our defensive effort,” Clinton-Massie head coach Brian Mudd said. “We only gave up 46 points and just 17 points in the first half. That’s what we’ve been trying to stress to our kids — if we come out and play defense, we’re going to give ourselves opportunities to win games.

“In spite of losing our first three games, we played reasonably well in those games. We’ve just had defensive lapses. For the most part tonight, I thought we did a pretty good job of making Miami Trace work for what they got. We contested shots. Offensively, we did enough.”

It was a slow start to the game for both teams Saturday. There was no score through the first four minutes of play. McCormick first dented the scoreboard with a three-point goal at the 3:42 mark of the opening quarter.

Carson stepped up and answered the scoring of McCormick, with a two-point bucket and three-point goal to tie the score, 5-5.

Wysong scored with 12 seconds to play to make it 7-5 after one.

Fouls were plentiful, as the Falcons were in the one-and-bonus before the first period was history.

After a basket by the Panthers’ Logan Rankin, the game remained tied, 7-7 until Amburgy hit two free throws near the six-minute mark of the second quarter.

Miami Trace took a 12-9 lead on scoring by Rankin and Carson.

McCormick finished the scoring in the first half with a breakaway slam dunk, making it 21-17 Falcons at halftime.

With two three-point buckets by Amburgy, the Falcons took a 28-19 lead with 5:30 to play in the third quarter.

After a three-point shot by Decker, McCormick hit another trey to keep his team up by 12.

Marting had a three-point play, and Decker scored four points around a basket by Wysong to make it 38-31 Falcons after three.

Caleb Redding hit an early basket for the Panthers in the fourth quarter, but soon the Falcons were up by 12 on a five-point outburst from Justin Evans and D.J. Jewett.

The Panthers twice more cut the deficit to eight points, but could climb no closer as the Falcons went on to post the 15-point victory.

“We’re still trying to come together,” Mudd said. “You lose three games early, you start to doubt yourselves. I tried to convince the kids tonight, hey, we can’t doubt ourselves. We have to believe we are as good as we thought we were going to be. I think we have the ability to be a pretty decent basketball team, as long as we play defense every night.”

SUMMARY

MT 5 12 14 15 — 46

CM 7 14 17 23 — 61

(46) MIAMI TRACE (fg-3fg-ft-tp) H.R. Wood 0-0-0-0; Ty Leach 0-0-0-0; Caleb Redding 2-0-1-5; Brody Decker 4-1-1-10; Isaiah Carson 7-2-1-17; Daniel Hiser 0-0-0-0; Cameron Pavey 0-0-0-0; Alex Marting 3-0-3-9; Logan Rankin 2-0-0-4; Tucker Hughes 0-0-1-1. TOTALS — 18-3-7-46. Free throw shooting: 7 of 18 for 39 percent. Three-point field goals: Carson, 2; Decker.

(61) CLINTON-MASSIE (fg-3fg-ft-tp) Justin Evans 3-1-0-7; Shane Curtsinger 0-0-0-0; Travis Amburgy 3-2-2-10; Taylor Luckett 0-0-2-2; Nick Stivers 0-0-2-2; D.J. Jewett 1-0-1-3; Noah Dell 0-0-0-0; Logan McCormick 7-2-6-22; Andrew Wysong 3-0-6-12; Jeff Burton 1-0-1-3; Ryan Allbright 0-0-0-0. TOTALS — 18-5-19-61. Free throw shooting: 19 of 32 for 59 percent. Three-point field goals: McCormick, 2; Amburgy, 2; Evans.