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Newton Falls wins in season opener
By John bassetti
Newton Falls
A strange thing happened on the way to the fourth quarter in the Newton Falls-Salem game Friday night.
After scoring 16 points in the first half, junior sharpshooter Cody Dillon failed to score in the third period.
Yet the junior scored nine more points in the fourth period to finish with 25 for the Tigers (1-0), who eventually put enough distance between the Quakers to win, 84-69.
“He had box-and-one coverage for awhile, then got his fourth foul and sat about three minutes,” coach Roy Sembach explained.
He said that Dillon is doing a better job of not forcing anything.
“He’s maturing. He can score, pass, rebound and defend, but all we ask is for him to make the right decisions. We have plenty of guys who can score.”
In Dillon’s place, Tyler Kernen had 10 of his 14 points in the third quarter.
Sembach said that his coaches, at halftime, realized that Kernen was the only scoreless Newton Falls player.
“He’s likely going to be our second-leading scorer [this season], but we knew he’d get his points. He was patient, but got to the foul line in the second half and got his points.”
Matt Brazin had 18 points and Dale Kernen 12 for Newton Falls, which sank 33-of-44 free throws to Salem’s 17-of-21.
Crashing the offensive boards in the first half helped Newton Falls, a regional runnerup in 2009-10.
“Our first scrimmage this year we were terrible on the glass, so we emphasized that and I’m proud the way we rebounded tonight,” Sembach said. “We were relentless on the boards.”
Sembach added that he’s proud of varsity assistant Tom Shaulis, who prepared the team in the early stages of preseason.
“This being his 20th year, I think Tom was very instrumental in getting our team ready because I really wasn’t pleased with the way we’ve been playing the last couple weeks. He’s done an outstanding job, not on for getting this team ready, but for the 20 years he’s put in with us.”
Salem’s Jake Madison had a game-high 31 points.
“We knew Salem would be a very good-shooting team,” Sembach said. “We knew he [Madison] was capable, but he just caught fire. He was patient, especially when we flew out on him, he was patient enough to fake the shot, then sidestep our guy and knock down the shot after we flew by him. It wasn’t like we didn’t know who he was. We knew that [Ryan] Wolfgang, [Trent] Kenreigh and [Ryan] Bush were all good shooters, but [Jake] Madison got us well aware of him being a shooter.”
Madison’s total included 10 3-pointers.
Salem’s first-year coach Rich Hart acknowledged that his Quakers failed to crash the boards especially in the first half.
“We just didn’t do a good job on the offensive boards. Therefore, we didn’t get many easy shots because we couldn’t run.,” he said. “ We need to run to get the ball up and down the court. If you don’t rebound, you can’t run. That negated a big part of our game.”
He added, “If we rebound the ball [off of Newton Falls’ basket], they [wouldn’t have gone] to the line 44 times.”