Sports
Athens Falls Hard to Parkersburg
By: Nick Ursini
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The 6-2 Athens Bulldogs welcomed out-of-conference foe Parkersburg (9-2) Tuesday night, but were held in check all night, falling to the Big Reds, 71-45.
Athens started out slow against a much bigger Parkersburg team. The Bulldogs had a tough time breaking the press and had trouble keeping up with the quick transition game of the Big Reds.
Athens was down 16-9 at the end of the first quarter and could never comeback.
Athens star Griffin Lutz was held in check all game. Parkersburg forced Lutz and the Bulldogs into eight first half turnovers and contested shots that they could not finish at the rim. Lutz finished the game with 16 points.
Parkersburg’s offense was very hard to contain as they got the ball into the paint with their big men, finished at the rim, and sometimes kicked it out to their open teammates for a three pointer.
Three players finished with 10 or more points. The leading scorer for the Big Reds was Karson Snyder, recording 18 points Kam White and Parker Miller finished with 16 points.
Despite the loss, first-year head coach Mickey Cozart was proud of his team for continuing to fight until the final whistle and said this game came with a lot of lessons learned.
“We schedule tough to help us prepare for the TVC-Ohio tournament. We are a pretty good team, but we’ve got to learn when teams are playing you that aggressively and you may not be getting those calls, that you got to play through that and slow down and gather yourself and run the offense.”
“There were multiple occasions tonight where we ran our offense and we got easy buckets. We just have to play better and smarter. We are going to play hard, that is in our DNA. We are going to go down swinging, we’re fight to the end, that is who we are. I am proud of them.”
The Bulldogs get a couple of days to go back to the drawing board before traveling to Wellston (2-8) to take on the Golden Rockets.