Rumble in the East

Twin Valley South went thru a tough 5 day stretch this past week, playing 3 games in 5 days.  With two of those games on the road against tough CCC opponents.  Tuesday saw South lose on the road against Franklin Monroe by 5, 45-40. But they rebounded Friday against Bradford with a decisive 70-50 victory.  That brought up Saturday night’s road game against Miami East who was coming off of a Friday night victory of their own.  They dispatched Newton easily 52-24.  South and Miami East entered the game with similar 8 win records and both are jockeying behind Tri-Village for second place in the conference and also a good seed in the state tournament.

But before the game started there was a ceremony for the Miami East volleyball team who received championship rings for their state championship – their second in a row.  The school had the raised the money with fund raisers. They had only one loss on the season and won the championship in straight sets, so it was great to see their achievements rewarded.

Back to the game – South started slow.  They gave up 3 turnovers in the early going and along with some fouls, they were playing sloppy.  Miami East charged out to an early 9-2 lead.  Coach Augspurger took a time out to get the players settled down – and they went to work.  Mike Green responded and helped spark a little run to keep the score close.  The two post players – South’s Mike Green and East’s AJ Hickman battled all night.  South played in man to man defense while Miami East stayed in a zone defense for the most part.

So after being down in the first quarter, South hit their stride in the second quarter.  Mike Green tied the game at 14–all on a put back and in the next possession Jesse Wysong sunk a trey to give South their first lead of the night.  JJ Utz then hit a layup and the Miami East coach had seen enough, calling a time out to cool off the South run.  East’s Luke House scored two points at the end of the half to close the gap and South went to the locker room with a 19-17 lead in a defensive battle.

The game became unraveled in the third quarter for South.  Miami East really focused on Green in the second half and so he scored no points in the third.  And the South perimeter was stone cold, they weren’t hitting their shots.  Although Green got a respectable 18 points on the night,  no one else scored more than 4. At the other end of the court, East was able to make some backside cuts to get some easy baskets.  Finally, to add to South’s frustrations, they were called for a technical foul.  It was a miserable quarter – East rallied for  14 points and South only scored 4.    

South tried to respond in the last quarter, but they were giving up bonus – which sent East to the foul line and just didn’t seem to get any breaks.    The team had their best quarter scoring wise, but it was not enough as East held off any attempt at a comeback and won 46-35. 

“We struggled to score,” commented coach Augspurger after the game, “I think we are a little too emotional.  We get a bad call against us – we react and we get angry.  We miss a couple of shots and we react by getting down on ourselves.  Instead of just understanding that those things are just part of the game and we have to play thru it.  In order to be successful we just have to stop that.”

“Our offensive symmetry is just not what it needs to be and tonight I thought we rushed our shots,”  he continued, “Jesse Wysong spotted up and hit a nice three, but every other shot – I thought we rushed it.  We knew coming into the new year that this would be our toughest week – playing Franklin Monroe and Miami East on the road.  They are both good basketball schools.  I can not fault how we battled – we defended pretty well and gave great effort but we didn’t finish some of our possessions and just didn’t score enough.”