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Tri-Village
senior Evan Barger takes the ball to the hoop against Arcanum in the
opening
game of the Jet Tournament at Franklin Monroe Monday. Barger and the
Patriots rolled to
a big win over the Trojans. CNO Photo by Dylan Knoop
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Tri-Village tops
Arcanum in tournament opener
By George Starks
Sports Editor
PITSBURG-
The opening round of the Annual Franklin Monroe Jet basketball
tournament left the Patriot faithful happy while the Arcanum following
was left wondering if things will ever get any better. Leading at all
three breaks, 17-6, 29-10, 50-22, the Patriots
were large and in charge right from the tip-off.
The Trojans did everything in their power to stop the high-powered
Patriot attack. Starting with a 1-3-1 zone, the object was to contain
junior Kyle Pipenger. That worked but it allowed sophomore Tyler Cook
to roam free and Cook took full advantage of that freedom scoring a
majority of his 22 game points early.
Trojan coach Brian Gunter then decided to try a man-to-man defense but
Pipenger went on a scoring rampage, netting most of his game high 24
points.
Arcanum then went to a 2-3 zone in an effort to paralyze the
Tri-Village offense. That didn’t work either.
“This was the best offensive performances we’ve shown in a long time,”
said Patriots coach Josh Sagester. “We had two different guys scoring
and then the other guys distributing and the offensive rebounding. I
was very pleased tonight with the whole package.”
The Trojans threw three different looks at the Pats on defense.
Tri-Village had the answer starting with Cook.
“They started out in that 1-3-1 zone and Shade (Brubaker) hit that trey
and that sent a message saying that we could make some shots,” Sagester
stated. “We went up 9-0 and I don’t want to sound arrogant but teams
are having a hard time guarding us man-to man. We know if we can get
you in a man situation, we are going to be hard to guard. They went to
the man defense and we were able to get our horses on the blocks like
we wanted to. Then they went back to the zone and we were able to find
Pipenger on the perimeter. On offense, we were clicking, we ran our
sets very well and we had good timing. It was a pretty good performance
because we barely practiced Saturday and had no practice yesterday and
coming out and playing today, so I’m fairly pleased with out energy
level.”
After getting its first win of the season over Mississinawa Valley
Friday, Arcanum just flat ran in to a buzz saw in Tri-Village.
“It was a very tough game,” said Gunter. “This (T-V) is a good team.
This is a team that doesn’t make very many mistakes and when they do,
which is seldom, you have to capitalize. Cook, like always, did a nice
job around the block. Pipenger, played well even with the shot being
contested.”
According to Gunter, his Trojans need to be more consistent.
“We need to string four good quarters together,” Gunter said. “They had
an answer for everything we did. They took great game shots. I thought
we got some good minutes from Balsbaugh coming off the bench. We try to
model ourselves after teams that play very well and this was a good
experience for us. We will come out tomorrow night, get after it and go
from there.”
Behind Pipenger and Cook, Brubaker chipped in with ten to help balance
the attack.
For the Trojans, Balsbaugh and Grady Garno had nine each.
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