Boardman forces more than a turnover a minute in rout of Howland

January 30, 2019 at 12:07a.m.

Spartans take it away from Howland 34 times

By BOB ETTINGER

HOWLAND

Boardman boys basketball coach Pat Birch needed to see more from the Spartans on the defensive end of the floor after their last timeout. He couldn’t have asked for a better performance in that regard following a 74-34 victory at Howland in All-American Conference Red Tier action on Tuesday night.

“That goes back to last Friday night,” Birch said. “We weren’t zeroed in on defense. We knew since June, if we were going to be as good as we could be, it started on that end of the floor. We were all a little disappointed on that end Friday night. If we make the right effort, have the right mindset and take the right approach, we’re a very good team. It’s all about the effort for us.”

The Spartans (13-3, 7-0) forced 34 turnovers — 20 in the first half — in running away to their ninth straight victory.

“I thought we had a good day of preparation [Monday],” Howland coach Dan Bubon said. “The problem is we can’t simulate their athleticism. We can execute our press-breaker well against ourselves, but they do it with a different speed and physicality and we reacted very poorly to it. We aren’t the only ones they’ve done that to, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable.”

Boardman raced out to an 8-0 lead just more than two minutes in behind six points from Che Trevena and held a 22-5 advantage through eight minutes.

“It’s fun to play that way,” Birch said. “The guys have bought in. [Pressing the way we do] is not easy. It takes a lot of effort. The key is having a lot of depth and we’re able to go 11 deep. Sometimes that takes a sacrifice in minutes [by individuals], but when we bring that next group in, they come in with a lot of energy. The fun as a coach comes from having a group that’s focused on the end result.”

It only got worse for the Tigers (6-10, 2-5) as the night went on.

“Coming into the game, there were two things that couldn’t happen,” Bubon said. “One was they couldn’t outrebound us and they definitely did that. The second was we couldn’t turn the ball over. I’ve been coaching 16 years and I don’t know if we’ve ever committed any more than that and it felt like double that. A lot of them were because Boardman is very good at forcing them. A lot of it still had to do with us. We’ve got to react to [the press] and we reacted very poorly.”

Trevena led all scorers with 18 points, Derrick Anderson added 11 and Nick Davis chipped in with 10 for the Spartans.

Frankie Manios paced Howland with 11 points.