Sports
Eastern Handles Point Pleasant with Passing Clinic
By: Jacob Murray
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Last Friday against the Lancers, the Eastern Eagles (8-5, 5-3 TVC-Hocking) were unable to figure out the 1-3-1 zone that was being used against them.
This time when Point Pleasant ran the same defensive scheme, they passed the ball inside, finding a man in the best position to score more than half of the time.
This excellent ball movement helped to propel the Eagles to the 72-62 victory over the Point Pleasant Big Blacks.
Eastern head coach David Kight was thrilled with the way his team passed the ball in tonight’s win. “We moved the ball 10 times better in this game than we did against Federal Hocking,” he said.
The Eagles finished the night with 20 assists as a team and they could have had more. This kind of unselfish basketball by Eastern helped Garrett Ballinger have a big night. He had 26 points, eight rebounds, four assists and also had a crucial block in the fourth to help the Eagles put away the Big Blacks.
“He got to the spots that we needed him to get to and the other guys helped get the ball to him,” Eastern head coach David Kight said. “He shot 10-for-12; it will be very hard to find anything to critique.”
Even though their defense wasn’t controlling the game as they would have liked it to, Point Pleasant still stayed competitive in this game. Guards Hunter Bush and Braxton Yates kept the Big Blacks in the game, combining for 43 of their team’s 62 points.
The Eagles made the defensive adjustments to stop this duo in the second half, especially holding off the late game run Point Pleasant used to try and steal the game. One point on the defensive end was to stop Yates from getting easy looks
“We wanted them to hedge and switch harder on ball screens,” Kight said. “We didn’t help off of penetration as much and we contained that penetration.”
The Eastern Eagles will host the Miller Falcons this Friday.