GAME PHOTOS: http://smu.gs/2gU1r0O
For those who were wise enough to peruse the fine basketball preview section of the Maple Leaf last week, you will get a first-hand idea of how each county team will move along this season.
For the West Geauga Wolverines, the early assessment of coach Jeff Javorek played out flawlessly as his team overcame a lackluster first half with a huge third period, sparked by two players with varsity experience from last season, Micah Young and Jax Shenkel.
West Geauga dispatched the visiting Aurora Greenmen, 80-69, in the lid-lifter for both teams on the 2016-17 season.
Facing opening night anticipations and jitters, both squads played at a good pace in the first half but didn’t finish what they wanted to do, creating a 27-26 halftime deficit for the Wolverines.
In the preview of his team’s season, coach Javorek stated that “three-point shooting will probably be our strength this year.”
He was on the money with that concept. Nico Morgano nailed a trey coming out of the locker room in the third period to give his team a lead. Young drained a pair of them in a 12-point period as the Wolverines outscored the Greenmen, 32-8, in the quarter to take a commanding lead. Then, late in the game, they saw Aurora play at a frenzied pace to close the gap to under 10 points before West G hit eight free throws down the stretch to close out the win.
“Things went much better for us in the second half tonight,” Young said. “We just talked about playing harder at halftime, just focusing on what we had to do to win. In the first half, we didn’t finish our transition game with baskets like we want, we turned the ball over at tough times. But scoring 32 in a quarter and 54 for the second half really gave us a boost.”
Young finished with 26 points to lead the way, but as his team nailed 13 three-point shots for the game, half of their baskets made, he had plenty of help.
Beside Young, four other Wolverines reached double-digit scoring to overcome a huge opening night effort from Aurora’s Cade Huffman. Huffman put home a game-high 30 points, but was the only Greenmen player in double figures.
West G’s Mark Sexton tallied 16, Caleb Ramey added 13, and Shenkel and Morgano each added 11 as everybody who played made contributions at opportune times.
“We’ve got to learn to trust each other all the time,” Shenkel said.
After quarterbacking the Wolverines’ football team to a fine season on the gridiron, Shenkel will do basically the same for the hoops squad. His aggressive play in the second half, after early foul trouble sent him to the sidelines, played a huge role in getting teammates open for shots, which they made in the second half.
“I try to find the open man as often as I can, and if I get openings, I also try to get to the basket as well,” Shenkel said.
Javorek was pleased with how his team responded in the second half.
“With only two varsity starters back, we need to grow up quickly,” he said. “It’s a new atmosphere for most of the kids, but they had a lot of success with junior varsity last year, they shoot the ball well, we have several kids who can get hot in a game with their shooting, so we want to push things as much as we can. I was really happy with how our kids answered tonight in the third period after we talked at halftime about doing what we do best.”
The Wolverines are not small, but are also not built around a lot of size, so pushing the ball will be key for them this year.
A less-than-stellar 15-of-28 effort from the free throw line could have hurt their chances for a win. But pressure, which forced 18 turnovers from the Greenmen in the game, and tight defensive pressure, which saw the visitors hit on only 25 of 63 shots, gave the Wolverines an edge.
When you are hitting over 46 percent from the floor and half of those baskets are from beyond the arc, chances of winning become much greater.
Coming off a 12-13 season last year, and with loads of optimism for this season from everybody, things are, indeed, looking up for West Geauga.
GAME PHOTOS: http://smu.gs/2gU1r0O