Eagles soar past Panthers

Olonzo Johnson and Anthony Walker excelled at the end against East.

Vindicator staff report

YOUNGSTOWN — The East High boys basketball team battled back from a 15-point deficit to pull within six, but Olonzo Johnson and Anthony Walker came through at crunch time to seal Youngstown Christian’s 61-56 non-league victory on Friday.

Johnson had a team-high 26 points and 10 rebounds, while Walker, a 6-5 sophomore, and junior John Pecchia had 15 apiece.

“They got us out of sync and we didn’t do a very good job staying organized and disciplined,” Youngstown Christian coach Dolph Carroll said of the fourth quarter when East (2-4) closed the gap to 56-50 on Mark Thornton’s putback with 1:30 remaining.

“We just took bad shots down the stretch and we weren’t smart with the ball,” Carroll said of East’s pressure at the time. “They’re so long and athletic and that gave us some trouble. We’ve got to be smarter than that down the stretch.”

Kenny Carter had game-high 28 points for East, but the 6-3 senior who also had nine of his team’s 32 rebounds missed three of four free throws in a 15-second stretch in the final 75 seconds.

“I told our guys that if they don’t come to play, you’re going to go home with your heads down,” East coach Mark Cherol said. “Look what happened. They came out and outplayed us. I felt like my kids weren’t ready to play. We had a bad night.”

Cherol didn’t stop by putting the blame on the players.

“I didn’t coach well, but we warned our kids that his [Carroll’s] team is very fundamentally sound and aggressive,” Cherol said.

The aggressive defense worked both ways, with East using the full-court variety to peck away at the Eagles’ 32-17 lead starting early in the third quarter.

“I was OK with how we handled their press the first 31‚Ñ2 quarters,” Carroll said. “Even in the fourth, we had to make some adjustments and the kids responded well. We just got ourselves in bad situations. Hopefully, we’ll learn from this and get better at it.”

Carroll, a second-year coach, is originally from Oklahoma and played at Kansas. He also aided former Youngstown State coach John Robic for a few years.

Youngstown Christian (7-1) was able to widen its lead on East early in the fourth quarter when Pecchia dished off a pass to Johnson for an easy jumper.

Pecchia followed with two-point and three-point baskets to stretch the Eagles’ lead to 50-36.

When East mounted its final threat, Johnson and Walker responded.

“We stayed focused, organized and under control and got through it,” Johnson said.

How big a win was it?

“It’s pretty big,” Johnson said, “especially for us because it kind of puts us on the map and gives us a little more respect.”

A coast-to-coast layup by Walker inside a minute drew a thunderous roar from the home court crowd.

“I was very happy to see it went in,” Johnson said of his teammate. “That gave us a lot of momentum.”

Carroll was happy, too.

“We went back inside and got something going quick,” the coach said of Youngstown Christian’s late delivery.

“They took us out of what we wanted to do, they really did — the whole game. I’m not happy with how we played our inside game. We were making plays when we needed to rather than when we wanted to. Our organization wasn’t good.”

Cherol said he had no excuses.

“We weren’t ready to play,” he said. “Coach Carroll did a great job with his team. They played hard-nose defense on us and we had a little problem with their man-to-man defense for awhile.

“Then we got some steals and quick buckets and started getting back in the game, then we got careless with a turnover off a steal, because we turned it right back over and they ended up scoring.”

Jarelle Burt added 13 points for the Panthers, who made just 24 of 78 goals and 5 of 13 free throws.

The Eagles connected on 23 of 54 goals and 14 of 19 free throws.