Boy's Basketball: Clarke County vs Wood

WINCHESTER — Clarke County boys’ basketball coach Brent Emmart says teams usually make their biggest gains early in the season.

His club certainly made a huge leap between Game 1 and Game 2.

The Eagles, who lost their opener 67-42 against Broadway on Monday, rebounded in a big way by whipping James Wood 74-31 in the Colonels’ opener at Shirley Gymnasium on Friday.

“As a basketball team, you make your most improvement between Game 1 and Game 5,” said Emmart, who has led the Eagles to a pair of state titles during his previous 21 seasons. “After that, you kind of are who you are.”

Clarke County made vast improvements in several areas. The Eagles forced turnovers, drained open shots, pushed the pace and had an excellent defensive effort.

Leading 18-10 after one quarter, the Eagles opened the second period with an 11-2 run. James Wood closed to within 29-19 with 7-0 run, but Clarke County closed out the half with a 16-0 outburst.

Starting midway through the period, the Eagles held the Colonels without a field goal until a basket with about 20 seconds into the fourth quarter.

“Our momentum changed big time when we got a couple of layups,” said guard Colby Childs, who scored 11 of his 16 points in the quarter. “We were pressing them, they had a few turnovers and it left open shots for everyone.”

“We started off slow, but we got into our rhythm,” added Volkan Ergen, who scored 16 points and pulled in a game-high 11 rebounds. “Everything just went as I think it should have.”

Dakota McCaw, who led the Eagles with 21 points, said the formula in the period was simple. “We played better defense. We got the ball up the floor better and we were able to get shots off.”

The scheme continued to work as the Eagles opened up the second half with eight straight points before a pair of free throws by James Wood’s Jaden Ashby ended the run at 24 straight points.

“We just played hard,” said Emmart, who was most proud his team took three charging fouls in the contest. “The press was effective. We shot the ball well. We played together as a team. We turned them over a little bit and got some easy opportunities with our defense.”

Players say the difference between Game 1 and Game 2 was huge.

“I feel like we did better working as a team,” Childs said. “We worked together. We made the extra pass to get the extra bucket. We played better defense. We took charges when we had to. It was a great all-together win.”

After the contest, McCaw seemed more interest in his stat line for assists (5) than his total points. He says feeding others is the key to a better season. A total of 10 different Eagles scored on Friday.

“We actually share the ball this year,” he said. “We don’t have like a one-man team. We pass the ball around.”

McCaw said the Eagles are definitely a better team this season and Childs said a big win like Friday’s certainly helps.

“It is a boost of our confidence,” Childs said. “It gets us to know that we can be good when we play well and when we want to change momentum of the game we can do it.”

Lid on the basket

James Wood coach Tim Wygant was beginning to wonder early in the third quarter if there really was a lid on the Colonels’ basket. Clarke County’s defense and a rough shooting night in his team’s opener led to a more than 13-minute span where the Colonels failed to make a shot from the floor.

On the night, James Wood made just eight field goals and no 3-pointers, while the other half of its points (15) came from the foul line. Ashby led the Colonels with seven points, all from the foul line.

“Credit Clarke County, they did a good job of speeding us up,” Wygant said. “... If I had to really pinpoint something, I think we were getting relatively high percentage shots for high school basketball players and they weren’t going in.”

Wygant said he counted at least nine layups missed early in the third quarter, a period in which his players did not score from the field.

“I credit [the Eagles] a lot,” Wygant said. “They forced some difficult shots. We forced some difficult shots for ourselves. I don’t want to take any credit from them at all, but I think that we got caught up in the moment of, ‘we got to the rim, now what are we going to do with it.’”

Even with his team suffering a lopsided loss, Wygant still remains optimistic. He says the Colonels must focus on the process which leads to success.

“While getting wins is the ultimate goal, the right way to play basketball is foremost,” he said. “Did we play the right way? Not necessarily tonight, but I think we did see more growth than the alternative.”