This past week South went
back to basics on defense during their preparation and it paid dividends in the
opening round of the state tournament. It may have been first round jitters but
South had problems scoring in the first quarter. Anthony Augspurger
finally scored the first points of the night after South went scoreless for the
first 4 and a half minutes. But fortunately their defense had held West Liberty
to just 6 points at that juncture. South finished out that first quarter strong
and were only down by a point at the end of the first quarter (7-6).
In addition to a refocused
defense, South hit the boards hard and despite West Liberty-Salem’s height
advantage, they did a good of pulling rebounds off of the glass. They were very
effective snagging defensive rebounds, which limited the Tigers ability to get
points off of put backs. South played an aggressive man to man defense the entire
game while the Tigers alternated between man to man and zone defenses.
At about the 3 minute mark
of the second quarter, South got their first lead of the night. The Tigers made their first defensive switch of
the night dropping the man defense and going to a zone defense. But the
Panthers proceeded to go on a little run to close out the first half with the
lead 20-13.
South broke the game open
in the second half. West Liberty had the South lead down to 2 points in the 3rd
quarter. Wes Cole then got into a shooting zone and scored 12 points in
the quarter and gave South an 8 point
lead. When West Liberty pressured the
edge to get Cole out of his game, South fed the ball inside in the 4th quarter
and went on a 10-2 run to extend the lead even more thanks to Augspurger who
scored 9 of his 15 points in the last quarter.
The Tigers went into a
press in the last 5 minutes as they pulled out all of the stops in an effort to
generate some points. Being aggressive
they fouled and South shot a decent 9 of 14 from the foul line. South outscored West Liberty and was able to
empty the bench in last minute and a half as they won 56-38.
“We talked this past week
about how we played so well defensively in the first 12 games or so,” spoke
coach Augspurger after the game, “and it wasn’t that we were a bad defensive
team – but we were not doing things as well in the second half of the season.
And this week we went back to doing drills, working on fundamentals and doing
things the right way. And tonight I thought that we played 3 excellent quarters
of defense. That was definitely the key to the game.”
Next he was asked about
South breaking the game open in the second half, “It all started when Wes Cole
got hot and started feeling it in the 3rd quarter. He hit a crazy
shot at the end of the quarter to give us momentum. Then I thought that Anthony
Augspurger did a great job of going inside and being strong in the 4th. And we clamped the D back down - not giving
them good looks and that was what made the biggest difference. At this point,
you survive and move on.”
South will be playing
Brookville on Tuesday at 6pm at Bellbrook High School, “Brookville is scary,
they are playing better than when we played them the first time. They know us and we know them – they chose to
play us and they have had more time to get ready. Brookville plays in this league,
so they play in this gym all the time so that is an advantage for them. I just hope that we continue to be nasty on D
and we will see what we see.”
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