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Shaw’s game plan slows Boardman
Photo
Boardman’s Deion Harris (22) goes in for a layup against Shaw defenders during the second period of a game Tuesday in Boardman.
By BRANDON JUDEH
Boardman
It took four full quarters, but the Shaw boys basketball team’s slow pace put a halt to Boardman, 46-39, on Tuesday night.
It appeared that neither team could get into a comfortable rhythm early on, as it was a slow defensive slugfest through out. This was evident in the first quarter as the Spartans outscored the Cardinals 8-6.
Boardman jumped out to a 4-0 lead when Shaw finally scored its first bucket 4:40 into the game.
The second quarter was a carbon copy of the first.
The Cardinals continued to run a slow, pass-heavy, half-court offense that, at one point, ate close to two minutes off the clock. Despite dominating the tempo, it took Shaw exactly six minutes to score in the second quarter.
Boardman’s dominance on the defensive end helped the Spartans take a modest 16-14 lead into halftime.
But it was a tale of two halves for the Spartans.
Boardman’s 6-foot-6 senior center, Dayne Hammond, said the Spartans’ game plan was to shut down Shaw’s tandem of Davonte Price and Corey Maddox, who have accounted for 80 percent of the Cardinals’ offense this season.
“We decided we were going to sit in the 42 defense and help out on stopping Price and Maddox and it worked in the first half, but our intensity dropped in the second half and we just struggled,” said Hammond.
At the start of the third quarter the Spartans came out running with Hammond leading the way scoring six points in a row, two of which came on a monster dunk.
That is when the game changed in Shaw’s favor, this time for good.
The Cardinals proceeded to go on a 10-0 run to build a six-point lead that they never relinquished.
“Boardman was playing great defense in the first half so we wanted to slow things way down and pick our shots,” said Shaw coach Leon Hines. “Hammond is a [heck] of a player and they had a couple other guys in there doing great things defensively so by us slowing everything down that really helped us.”
Hammond scored a game high 13 points and grabbed 13 boards, but Shaw held him to only two fourth-quarter points, thanks in large part to a quick fix on defense.
“We put a smaller, quicker guy on him to harass him. Kind of like putting a mosquito on a giant, he was pretty much their entire offense so by us doing that it slowed him down,” said Hines.
Shaw’s Maddox had a solid 10-point output, while the Spartans’ Brian Butts hit two 3-pointers and scored eight points.
“Playing fast paced ball is our forte, we like to get up and down the court and score points and when they slowed down it took a lot away from our offense as you can see by us only scoring 39 points,” said Hammond.
Another big contributing factor to Boardman’s seven-point loss was that they shot 5 for 12 from the charity stripe.