Cold-shooting Red Devils fall to Eureka
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| Hall senior Tony Victor plays keep-away from Eureka’s Alex Hunt Monday at Granville. (BCR photo/Kevin Hieronymus) |
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GRANVILLE — Mike Filippini can count on one hand the number of times his Hall Red Devils were not in the ballgame throughout the 2011-12 basketball campaign. On Monday, he had to add another.
The Eureka Hornets broke open an 8-point ballgame with a 13-0 run from the middle of the third quarter into the start of the fourth quarter to go up by as much as 21 points in the opener of the Putnam County 2A regional boys basketball tournament. The Hornets finished off a 62-42 win to advance into Wednesday’s semifinals against top-seeded Fieldcrest.
For the Hall Red Devils, their season came to a close earlier than desired, bowing out at 17-11.
“It’s really disappointing. I have a lot left on the table. I’m sure the rest of my teammates would say they’re disappointed, too” Hall senior Derek Lukosus said. “If you gave us another shot (Tuesday) night we’d come out a lot different, but it don’t work that way. The season’s done.”
“Right now it doesn’t seem there’s a lot of positives,” Filippini said. “They played in a ton of close games, a ton of big games. When you end like this it doesn’t feel good, but they did do a lot of great things this year and a lot of things nobody thought they’d be capable of doing.”
Hall’s biggest downfall was its shooting, which saw the Red Devils remain cold. Hall shot 36 percent from the field, making good on 18 of 49 attempts from the floor. Filippini also pointed to a lack of rebounding that led to some Hornet putbacks.
“It’s two games in a row, we just weren’t making any shots,” Filipinni said, noting Friday’s loss to Roanoke-Benson that cost the Red Devils a share of the Tri-County Conference championship. “Nobody’s going out there not trying to hit shots. We just couldn’t make enough shots. We got ourselves down again. I thought we had a good start to the second half, got them right where wanted and gave up a 3-point play and it all started again. That game was almost a carbon copy of the Roanoke-Benson game.”
The second half started on an upswing for Hall with senior Brian Kruse picking the pockets of the Hornets on the first possession and taking it in for a layup to bring the Red Devils within 27-23. It went downhill quickly from there.
The Hornets (12-14) scored the next seven points, going up 34-23 on a putback by Hunt. Brett Fanning hit a 3-pointer and Kruse scored again on an assist by classmate Tony Victor to make it 36-28.
Then came the 13-0 run that put the dagger in the Red Devils. Tauter converted a 3-point play to start the fourth quarter and Brett Onnen added two free throws to cap the 13-0 swing for a 51-28 Eureka lead.
“Our effort just went away. They started hitting shots, we started getting down on ourselves. We beat ourselves in the third quarter,” Lukosus said.
Victor had a stellar game in his final night in the Hall jersey, scoring all nine of his points in the first half, including a late 3-pointer to keep Hall in the game at 27-21. He also tallied five assists.
Fanning led all scorers with 18 points for Hall and will be the focal point for the Red Devils to build around next year with the loss of senior starters Kruse, Lukosus and Victor.
“We had such a great year. We win 17 games and finished 17-11, but the way the last two games ended it sucks to lose that way,” Filippini said. “You never know want to lose like that. The reality is you’re only going to have one team’s going to be happy Friday night. Eureka shot the ball better than we did and played better than we did.”
• Notes: The regional continues Tuesday night with No. 7 Princeton (14-13) and No. 2 St. Bede (21-7) squaring off the for the second time in three days on the heels of the Tigers’ 66-58 win at Prouty Gym on Friday. The Tigers hope to repeat their scenario from 2011 when the followed up a lopsided defeat at the Academy with wins over the Bruins in the regular-season finale and regional opener. Tuesday’s nightcap pairs No. 3 Putnam County (22-7) vs. No. 6 El Paso-Gridley (16-9) at 8:10 p.m. Top-seeded Fieldcrest meets Eureka Wednesday. ... Fanning advanced in the 3-Point Showdown, making 8 of 15 attempts. Also advancing were Eureka’s Kyle Henchrichsen (10), Tate Taufer (9) and Onnen (7). .... Monday’s game drew a sparse following from Eureka with many Hornets’ fan attending their girls playing the Monmouth Supersectional. One of their faithful was retired longtime Eureka College coach Dave Darnall.
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