Johnson, Jackson lead Harding past Boardman

December 6, 2014 at 12:05a.m.

BOARDMAN

When the Warren Harding Raiders and Boardman Spartans were members of the now defunct Steel Valley Conference, they played quite a few basketball games that went down to the-wire.

As the two newest members of the All-American Conference, they used Friday night to resume that heated hardwood rivalry.

Shakem Johnson and Shondell Jackson each scored 20 points while Gabe Simpson added 14 as the Raiders downed the Spartans, 68-48 in the inaugural AAC, Red Tier contest for both teams at the Spartans Gymnasium.

“I thought we got off to a really good start and not to make excuses, but we got into some foul trouble as Derek [Culver] picked up his third, Shondell picked up his second and when you don’t have two of your four best players out there it’s going to hurt a little bit,” Raiders head coach Andy Vlajkovich said. “They’ve got to know they have to make adjustments to how officials are calling things as we have to make adjustments as well. I thought it took us out of our rhythm a little bit but that was good because we had to overcome a little adversity.

“I thought their kids did a great job. We were trying to trap all over the place and they were pretty patient and got some easy buckets. I was really happy with our start; I was really happy with our finish but I wasn’t real happy in the middle.”

Five points by Johnson and a triple by Jackson staked the Raiders (1-0, 1-0) to an early 8-0 advantage. With Johnson scoring 11 of his 20 points in the opening frame, Harding raced to a 25-12 lead after the first eight minutes.

The Spartans (0-1, 0-1) outscored the Raiders 17-14 in the second quarter behind four points each from John Ryan and Marcus Smith as they cut Harding’s lead to 39-29 at intermission.

Simpson scored eight of his 14 points in the second quarter.

“Our goal was to score like 25 points every quarter and we only scored seven points in the third quarter,” Jackson said. “Fatigue kicked in, we got tired, people got in foul trouble but we rebounded well, went to the paint, took advantage of our height and finished strong.”

Six points by Boardman’s Gannon Murray and a stingy Spartans defense that held the Raiders to single digit scoring pulled the Spartans to within seven, 46-39, with eight minutes remaining.

“We never get down and tried to keep the momentum up the whole time, but we could have done a better job on defense tonight,” Johnson said.

The Raiders went on an 8-2 run to open the final period to extend their lead to 54-41 and with Jackson and Johnson combining to score their next 13 points, they opened a 67-45 margin with a little over two minutes to play en route to their first AAC victory.

“We knew going into this game that we had a resilient group of kids as they responded well to challenges throughout the pre-season. I think early on we got caught in the moment; they got us a little with turnovers at the beginning of the game which allowed them to extend their early lead,” Spartans head coach Pat Birch said.

“It was probably the worst case scenario to start a first game of the year but we battled back. We didn’t make some shots, however and then they made us extend our defense in the fourth quarter and took advantage it.”