WGH shows Farrell ‘real basketball’

The perfect Raiders, who are now 8-0, will focus their attention on Sunday’s game against Mentor in Cleveland.

By JON MOFFETT

Vindicator Sports Staff

WARREN — A bewildered Ronald Shannonhouse stood outside the visitors’ locker room at Warren Harding’s gymnasium to wait for his team to board the bus.

After being blown out by the Raiders 75-34 on Wednesday night, the Farrell High coach was asked what his team could learn from the game. He shook his head and tried to gather his thoughts before responding.

“Nothing,” he said. “It was just clear that we’re not in their class ... If you can take anything from that, it’s that. You’ve got a lot of work to do, and there’s a whole other world of basketball out there that you’re not experiencing and you can’t compete with ... Welcome to real basketball.”

There haven’t been many teams that can compete with the Raiders (8-0) who are enjoying a perfect season. And Wednesday’s victory over the Steelers (3-3) proved the team is focused.

But even with a dominating performance on both ends of the floor, Harding coach Steve Arnold was not satisfied.

“[My focus] is just to get better,” he said. “As a coach, I have to look at it for the weaknesses that we show. From a fan’s perspective, they might not see a weakness. But as a coach I’m looking down the road to see who our opponents are and where we need to get better.”

The game resembled more of a smash mouth contest between the National Football League counterparts that share the same names. The Raiders played physical on defense and moved the ball around on offense.

And before the Steelers knew it they were down by three touchdowns.

The Raiders won the opening tip and went on a 21-0 run in the first quarter. Farrell scored its first points of the game with just under a minute and a half left in the first.

Led by seniors Fred Williams and Kennis White, the Raiders had 11 players on the scoring sheet. Williams had a game-high 20 points and White was close behind with 12. Classmate Angel Gonzalez added nine points.

Perhaps just as important to the Raiders was preparation for Sunday’s game against Mentor. Harding will travel to Cleveland to face the Cardinals at the Wolstein Center at 1:30 p.m.

“We just talked about this after the game, about the challenge we have before us,” Arnold said.

Arnold said he is confident in his team for Sunday and the rest of the season. One factor, he said, is because the team spent a portion of the summer with open gym sessions practicing with players who had graduated. The physical sessions had no fouls called and taught the team to be tough, he said.

“It was competitive and it was the older guys against our younger guys,” he said. “We want the older guy to teach the younger guy. And that’s what we’ve done and we hope these guys will leave something for these other guys coming up.”

Farrell will play host to rival Sharon on Friday and Shannonhouse said he hopes his team learned something from Wednesday’s game.

“We’re not used to the unbelievable athleticism that Harding has; we don’t see that on a nightly basis,” he said. “Our guys were a little shell-shocked, no doubt about it.

“But if you’re a basketball player, you’ve got to knock some shots down. You don’t have to knock them all down, but you have to knock one or two down.”

Farrell’s scoring was spearheaded by Kevin Brodie, who had 12 points. None of the other seven Steelers scorers had more than six points.

jmoffett@vindy.com