Friday night’s game plan for the Crestview Cougars against Plymouth Big Red was simple – make the Big Red shoot threes.
“We stuck to our zone the whole game. We knew they were a good three point shooting team, but our goal was to make them take even more threes than they normally would and I believe they did” said Cougars Coach Bryan Hall. The only problem was that the Big Red stepped up and made those extra threes, finishing 8 for 18 beyond the arc. Five came courtesy of junior guard Tyson Beebe.
“Beebe has been working hard on his shot all summer long. He is one of our captains and our go to guys and he has been shooting it well all week so we knew he was going to come out and shoot well,” Plymouth coach Troy Keene said. Beebe would finish as the games high scorer with 23 points while adding four rebound and four assists. “He still has to learn to take better shots but he came out and really played a good game,” said Keene.
The 2-3 zone allowed Crestview to control the boards and limit second chance shots. They out rebounded the Big Red 24 to 15. Senior Bryan Hissong and junior forward Sawyer Radcliffe combined for 17 rebounds for the Cougars.
Crestview used their zone defense and rebounding to keep the game close for the first half and only trailed by 3 at the half.
“We got it and went and would focus on going down low was really effective.” Hall said giving credit to his big men Hissong and Radcliffe. Hossong would add 14 points while senior guard Chandler Durbin contributed eight points and Ben Olewiler added seven.
But the second half was a completely different story. The Big Red came out in a full court pressure defense that sped the game up and forced Crestview into unforced turnovers.
Hall said, “We just shot ourselves in the foot with the unforced turnovers and shuffling our feet committing traveling violations but our guys are getting it. They came out with a lot of heart and as a coach that is what I have been waiting to see.”
The Big Red would out score their counterpart 19-12 thanks to sharp shooting by Beebe and sophomore Dodge Collins. Collins sank 3 three pointers on the night for nine points on the night. Sophomore guard Remington Smedley would round out the scoring for the Big Red with six points.
The second half also saw the emergence of Plymouth’s own big man in Tyrell Edmiston. He came out of the locker room to grab nine rebounds and pour in 17 points for the game including a two-handed dunk.
Keene said, “Our game is inside out, we want everything to go inside then if it is not there, kick it out. We got away from that in the first half, but after that locker room talk, we came out and played our game. We kept pounding and kept pounding and good things happened for us.”
The Big Red pulled away to earn a 54-41 conference win that saw just four players reach the scorebook for the Big Red.
The Cougars will play host to Lucas on Saturday night.
The Big Red are off tomorrow but will have one of the toughest weekends on the schedule next weekend as the will be playing what Coach Keene called a “Sheldon Weekend.” They will play at Western Reserve next Friday as the Rough Riders are coached by Chris Sheldon, then turn around and play host to Colonel Crawford coached by older brother Dan Sheldon. “It will be a tough weekend but our guys are looking forward to the challenge and hopefully earning two quality wins.” Plymouth is 4-1 on the year.