ONTARIO — Plymouth’s role players took center stage Tuesday at Ontario High School.
Junior point guard Hunter Bailey scored a career-high 20 points and senior sharpshooter Trevor Hammond added 13 as the Big Red rumbled to a 68-35 win over Lucas in a Division IV sectional semifinal game at the O-Rena.
Second-seeded Plymouth (21-2) will play No. 3 seed Mansfield Christian for a sectional championship at 8 p.m. Friday.
High-scoring juniors Tyrell Edmiston and Tyson Beebe, who both scored their 1,000th career point earlier this month and average about 20 points apiece, combined for just 18 points Tuesday.
“Tyrell and Tyson are great scorers and everyone we play focuses a lot of their effort on stopping them,” said Bailey, who nearly had a triple-double with nine assists and nine steals. “We have to get other guys to step up because everyone is going to play their best in the tournament.”
Plymouth raced out to a 21-10 first quarter lead but the Cubs (2-21) made things interesting in the second, outscoring the Big Red 15-9. Lucas trailed 30-25 at the break and cut Plymouth’s advantage to 30-27 with less than five minutes remaining in the third before the Big Red turned up the defensive pressure. Plymouth outscored Lucas 38-8 during the final 13 minutes of the second half.
That was a tale of two halves. In the first half we just weren’t focused and didn’t play with any intensity,” Plymouth coach Troy Keene said. “Lucas could do anything they wanted to.
The three things that Lucas can do well is shoot the 3, shoot the 3 and shoot the 3 and our guys got burnt by it in the first half.”
The Cubs connected on 6 of 12 treys in the first half. Jakob Gerich knocked down four triples and scored 12 points in the first half.
“We got some good looks and made shots early, but our kids got tired in the second half,” Lucas coach Kyle Pertuset said. “Then we had a couple turnovers and they made a few shots and it snowballed on us.”
Hammond provided Plymouth with the spark it was looking for in the third quarter. The 6-foot-2 senior scored 10 of his 13 points in the period. Edmiston finished with 10 points, seven rebounds, six assists, three blocks and two steals.
Gerich led Lucas with 17 points. Thomas Schell had eight.
“I’m proud of our kids. That is the best two quarters we have played all year,” Pertuset said. “If we had brought the intensity we played with in the first half all season long, we would have had a lot more than two wins.”
Follow Curt Conrad on Twitter @curtjconrad.
