In the first iteration of the Dr. King’s Dream Classic, both Columbia Academy squads walked away victorious against East Marion.
The boys game was by far the more competitive game as the Cougars (8-15) narrowly beat the Eagles (9-10) at CA Monday night 49-42.
CA jumped out to an early lead with Will Arinder scoring on three straight possessions with crafty and agile moves in the post. The Eagles battled back early in the second quarter as Donny Anderson and Deuce Johnson found their shooting strokes, but the Cougars shortened the first half with a ball control offense that allowed them to get a couple good looks at the basket and preserve a 25-18 lead going into the locker rooms.
“People think we’re holding the ball, and that is totally untrue,” Cougars head coach Dale Watts said. “There is a point in the game in the last two minutes of the game (in the fourth quarter) where the clock is the enemy, and there’s one way to beat the clock and that’s to make it run. Prior to that, we had a lead on them, and they started coming back. We’re not holding the ball. Because of our team and our inability to really score from the perimeter, we’ve got to do something to extend the defense. We’re passing the ball and dribbling it around the lot, but we have to get you in position for us to get the shot that’s a high percentage for us to make.”
East Marion tied it 30-30 in the first minute of the fourth quarter, but then Hays Carley completely took over the game. He went on a 12-0 run by himself with three highly-contested layups — two of which were and-ones — and making all six of his free throw attempts. Over a four-and-a-half minute span, the Cougars scored 17 points — all by Carley. That scoring rate would extrapolate to 121 points over the course of a 32-minute game to put Carley’s prolific run in perspective. His ability to win on the perimeter with a lightning-quick first step and fearlessness to drive hard to the rim and finish through hard contact swung the game in CA’s advantage.
“There’s no doubt Hays Carley is our leader and the guy we depend on. In that type of game when I’m depending on guard play, he’s the guard with the most experience and the guard I want with the ball in his hands,” Watts said. “They had to double team him, and in turn he got to the rim and made good decisions.”
Prior to Carley’s fourth-quarter eruption, it seemed if East Marion could just take the lead, the Eagles would be in good position to win in the fourth quarter. They outplayed CA throughout the entire third quarter and had the momentum on their side. Their defensive pressure was starting to derail the Cougars’ passing on the perimeter within CA’s ball-control offense, and Carley had only scored seven points to that point — all on free throws in the first half. When they trailed by just one point early in the fourth quarter, the Eagles had a good look at the rim that didn’t fall that could’ve changed everything.
“Coach Ball felt like if we got that basket to go, when we were down one and got a steal, that it may have completely changed the complexion of the game,” East Marion head coach Calvin Brown said. “We’ll never know. Overall, their offense was little better than our defense. That was what the big chess match was — can we speed them up, and for them, can they slow us down? They just did a better job of slowing us down than we did of speeding them up.”
Carley finished with 24 points for the Cougars, and Joseph Hasselvander added nine points and Arinder seven. Johnson led the Eagles with 16 points, while Ladarien Haynes scored all 11 of his points in the second half.
The girls game wasn’t nearly as competitive as the Lady Cougars (13-13) blew out the Lady Eagles (9-11) by more than 30 points, 64-32.
Watts said the game came down to stopping East Marion superstar point guard Destiny Brown and the Lady Cougars scoring inside.
“They have a young team, and they rely on their point guard a lot, who is very good. We tried to take her out of the game as much as we could with what we call a ‘shadow defense.’ One girl was going to stick with her no matter where she went and try to deny her the ball. If she gets the ball, we make her have to work hard to make a shot or give it up. We were trying to double team her,” he explained. “The big difference was still our post play. We could score down around the basket with Lauren McDaniel and Peyton McCain, and I felt like they didn’t really have an answer for that.”
For the Lady Eagles, Brown said the game was a microcosm of what they have faced all year. Teams continue to pressure and double team Destiny Brown, but even when East Marion does make the right play to create a 4-on-3 situation, it isn’t capitalizing.
“You should at least be able to make a play to get a shot, or she’s got to find a way to make herself available. She has to sense the moment, when it’s needed, that she’s just got to take it by any means necessary to either make a play or set someone else up. That’s not new, and that’s not going to change,” he said. “That is our challenge the rest of the way.”
What was evident against CA was that the opportunities were there in those 4-on-3 situations to make the extra pass to get an easy layup, but the Lady Eagles were unable to make that extra pass. Brown said that’s where it shows how young they are. He added he can tell they are seeing when to make that extra pass, but they just always seem to be a half-second late, which allows the pass to get deflected or the shot off the pass blocked.
“The fact that they’re seeing the right play is progress. You just have to be patient and have a sense of urgency at the same time,” Brown explained. “I’m still excited about the potential, but at the same time I fear finishing the season with potential. That’s our theme for the second year in a row. We don’t want to finish the year talking about how much potential we have.”
McCain led all scorers with 23 points, while McDaniel added 16 points for the Lady Cougars. Destiny Brown was the only Lady Eagle in double figures with 13 points as Ellen Porter was the second leading scorer with nine points.
