|
The St James Trojans went into the Belleville Diocesan 8th Grade Boys ‘A’ Division Tournament as the number one seed. As a result the Trojans received a first round bye and initially would face lower seeded teams in their bracket, thus the benefit of being the number one seed. St James opened play on Saturday morning disposing of the Cathedral Crusaders in quick fashion. That meant they would be facing a familiar opponent in the Holy Childhood Apaches in the semi-finals. Although the Trojans had beaten the Apaches each time they had faced them this season, most recently in the third place game of the Althoff Feeder Tournament, the more you play a team the more difficult it can be to maintain that competitive edge. Not a problem for the St James Trojans. The Trojans came out focused and put away the Apaches early winning 52-27 and moving on to the diocese championship game on Sunday.
Knowing their opponent well, the Apaches came out in a man-to-man defense putting their best player on the Trojans’ Kyle Sweeney in the hopes of slowing him down. The Trojans countered with a full court press, which had worked well one week earlier against the Apaches. The Trojans’ game plan worked early as St James jumped out to an early 6-0 lead, forcing Holy Childhood into an earlier than wanted timeout. The timeout did little good as the Apaches didn’t score their first points of the game until the 4:00 mark of the first quarter. The Trojans’ defense continued to provide problems for the Apaches and that resulted in points as St James led 15-2 after the first quarter. St James Coach Shaun Johnston said, “We didn’t change anything from how we played them before. I thought we started out great and that was key for us. I thought that their man-to-man defense actually helped us offensively.”
The scoring slowed down a bit in the second quarter as St James dropped the full court press and went to a half court zone defense, but the outcome was the same. Holy Childhood’s offense struggled against the zone, unable to get good shots and sometimes having difficulty just moving the ball against the defense. Coach Johnston said, “Our two guards, Jordan McFarland and Sam Haudrich, are sixth and seventh graders. They very rarely make mistakes and we just don’t turn the ball over. They make good decisions and that really helps set the tone for us.” The Apaches didn’t get their second basket of the game until the 4:20 mark of the second quarter. While the Apaches had focused on stopping the scoring of Kyle Sweeney they failed to stop the other Trojan players. St James scored inside and outside, with almost all of their players involved. Sam Haudrich hit the outside shot while Zach Skaer and Kole Rakers were effective enough inside that things began to open up for Sweeney who also got in the act. The Trojans held a 29-7 lead at halftime. Coach Johnston said, “Once we got the lead I wanted to keep everything in front of us, not give up any easy baskets. We kept their offense off kilter the entire game, they never could really get it set up.”
The third and fourth quarters saw the Trojans increase their lead as they worked in their bench players with the starters. The Apaches stayed with their man-to-man defense, albeit ineffective, as the Trojans cruised toward victory. After three quarters it was 43-15 and Trojans’ bench players played most of the fourth quarter as they won the semi-final 52-27.
|
