PENNSYLVANIA Kennedy Catholic routs Wilmington

By BILL ALBRIGHT
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. -- During his long coaching tenure at both the high school and collegiate levels, Kennedy Catholic coach Tim Loomis has witnessed blowouts from the long and short end of the final score.
Friday night, Loomis watched his team cruise as Craig Wellman and Justin Gartner scored the first 15 points of the game for Kennedy as the Golden Eagles soared to a lopsided 69-19 win over the Wilmington Greyhounds.
Wellman led all scorers with 16 points, while Gartner had 15.
"I have been on the other side now and then," said Loomis. "It is tough for a lot of these teams to handle pressure and that is what we keep emphasizing like we did with last year's team.
"Even though you are playing teams who are not as athletic as you are and maybe not as talented, you still have to come out and get after it defensively all of the time."
Greyhounds no match
Loomis didn't have to convince Wilmington coach Nick Cannone about the ability of his team. He had just watched the Eagles outscore his club by the 50-point margin. However, despite the lopsided loss, Cannone looked at the result from a realistic point of view.
"When we play teams like Kennedy, who are seasoned and play almost all year round, we are out of our league," said Cannone. "We have kids who play other sports, we share our athletes and that makes it hard for us to compete against schools who have a group of kids who play basketball all year.
"They are too big, too talented, too deep and skill-wise, they are just much better than we are."
With the jump-start provided by Welland and Gartner, the Golden Eagles fed off the spurt and the lead snowballed from that point.
"We used that [instant offense] to build on our play at the defensive end of the floor," said Loomis. "Defense builds our offense, and I have always said that if we don't get 30 percent of our offense from our defense, we won't be a very good team."
Everybody got to play
In addition to posting a win, the contest gave Loomis and his staff a chance to look at a lot of kids in a lot of different combinations.
"I didn't load the schedule up early this year because I knew how young we would be," said Loomis, who started a pair of freshmen and a sophomore. "But that [playing a lot of people] is what is good about it. You never know how the young kids are going to respond to pressure, so hopefully this will get them the experience they need to face the loaded-up schedule at the end of the year."
Although blasted 44-9 during the first half, Wilmington played much better in the second half. Cannone was happy to see that because he knows his kids have to prepare for league play.
"We are just looking at our league," said Cannone. "As far as we are concerned, it is an eight-game season because we have eight league games and the winner goes to the playoffs.
"All we can do is to remind the kids that although it was ugly tonight, we have to keep working hard to get better," he added. "We try to emphasize to them to look at the big picture, which for us is to win the league and get into the playoffs."