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Coach, Vikings players pleased with successful home opener
By Pete mollica
Leavittsburg
LaBrae High head basketball coach Chad Kiser has been excited watching his boys team prepare for the upcoming season. He was even more excited after watching the Vikings in their season opener.
Friday night, sparked by the play of senior Jacob Jaros, junior Matt Szorady and freshman Peyton Aldridge, the Vikings opened the season with a 60-48 victory over Liberty in a matchup of All-American Conference foes.
Those three combined for 42 of the Vikings 60 points with Szorady leading the way with 15 points, Aldridge adding 14 and Jaros 13.
“They all have been working so hard getting ready for this season and it was a pleasure watching the results of their hard work,” Kiser said. “Those three and most of the others are in this gym at 6:30 a.m. every morning shooting around for more than an hour before school starts.
“We’ve still got a long way to go, but for a first game I was pleased with their effort, especially their hustle and aggressiveness on defense,” Kiser added.
Aldridge, a 6-5 freshman, plays like a veteran. And Kiser couldn’t say enough good things about the youngster.
“He’s the best freshman that I’ve seen in this area in a long while and he has a 4.0 grade point average and just works as hard as it is possible every day,” Kiser said.
Liberty, which had just one player returning from a year ago, struggled with turnovers, committing 29 in the game.
“We’ve got a lot of players who were making their first varsity starts tonight and we made a lot of mistakes, way too many turnovers,” said Liberty coach Marlon McGaughy. “We took a lot of bad shots, too many 3-point shots, although we did do a good job on the boards and had many second chance opportunities,” he added.
The Leopards (0-1) outrebounded the Vikings (1-0) by a margain of 30-24, but had a poor shooting night from the field, hitting just 19-of-51 shots including just 4-of-19 from 3-point range.
Still, for most of the first half the Leopards managed to stay right with the Vikings.
After LaBrae jumped out to a 6-0 lead on a pair of 3-point shots by Aldridge and Jaros, the Leopards closed the gap to 6-5 and were still within a basket with a minute remaining before LaBrae scored the final six points for a 15-7 lead.
Liberty outscored the Vikings in the second quarter behind junior Jabril Brown, who scored six of the team’s 15 points as the Leopards trailed only 26-22 at intermission.