Danbury pulls away from SMCC in third quarter

DANBURY TWP. — While halftime adjustments helped Danbury gain control of the boards and the game, cold shooting from St. Mary Central Catholic didn't hurt the Lakers' cause. The Panthers were just 7 for 36 from the floor as the Lakers grabbed 26 rebounds after intermission in their 62-51 Sandusky Bay Conference River Division victory Saturday night at Danbury High School. "That's not going to happen very often with them," Lakers coach Keith Diebler said of SMCC. "They missed some shots, but I thought the thing for us was we made some adjustments at halftime that got us some good looks and also rebounding position. "I wanted to make sure that when a shot was taken, we were doing the job rebounding, and I thought that was obvious in the second half." St. Mary CC (2-7, 2-4) owned a 22-13 edge on the boards in the first 16 minutes and went on a second quarter run that helped trim a 20-10 first-quarter deficit to 35-33 at the intermission. Then the third quarter happened. The Panthers went 3-for-19 shooting in the quarter and didn't score until a Jackson Rutger putback with 2:48 remaining in the period. By then, the Lakers were up 42-33 and followed the one SMCC bucket with the next six points from junior Blake Barker. "The third quarter was the difference," said St. Mary coach Chris Ceccoli. "We worked so hard to chip away at the lead and cut it to two at the end of the half, then all of a sudden they pushed it back out to 13. To our kids' credit, they fought and cut it back down to four." The Panthers did score the final four points of the third quarter and the first five of the fourth to cut the the Danbury lead to 48-44, but the Lakers answered with an 8-2 spurt to regain control. "It's been a journey here and we've shown signs of the things that we showed tonight," Diebler said. "Our thing is we want to make this a standard as a team. I thought defensively, we really, really played hard. John Massara is my defensive coordinator and today he came up with a game plan on defense that I thought worked the whole time. "I thought tonight was truly a group of guys who played as a team and really, really played to win." Barker scored 10 of his 15 points in the third quarter and matched his point output with 15 rebounds for the Lakers, while Grayson Clark had a team-high 16 points to go with seven rebounds. Bradley Murray added 13 points, while Danny Harris chipped in seven boards. "We designed the offense that when the ball was on one side of the court, we made sure we attacked the basket and freed up Blake," Diebler said. "I thought Blake really hit the boards in the second half, but I think we had some great passes inside to him. "It's one of the things that we're trying to learn here that nobody can be a hero. We've all got to do our job and I thought tonight every single guy who played did his job." Danbury (3-7, 2-4) finished with 39 rebounds, two less than the Panthers, and went to the line 37 times — 27 more than the visitors — and hit 20. Charlie Kaftan tossed in 16 points for St. Mary CC. "Our guy work so hard and we got a lot of great looks, we just left too many points on the rim and ended up playing catchup during the game," Ceccoli said. "We also gave up too many boards. We've been rebounding fairly consistently throughout the season, but tonight, especially on missed free throws, we gave up a lot of second-chance opportunities. We have to clean that up." --- ST. MARY CC Charlie Kaftan 6 0-2 16, Sedric Cook 4 0-0 8, Brock Gill 4 0-0 9, Ayden Kresser 2 1-4 5, Casey Crooks 0 1-2 1, Lance Powell 2 0-0 4, Braylon Harris 2 0-0 4, Jackson Rutger 1 0-2 2, Kyle West 1 0-0 2. Totals 22 2-10 51 DANBURY Maverick Murray 2 1-4 6, Blake Barker 7 1-5 15, Bradley Murray 3 5-6 13, Grayson Clark 4 8-10 16, Danny Harris 1 1-4 4, Andy Zelms 1 2-2 4, Guy Maltese 0 0-3 0, Daniel Webster 1 2-3 4. Totals 19 20-37 62 SMCC 10 23 6 12 — 51Danbury 20 15 13 14 — 62 Three-point goals—SMCC 5 (Kaftan 4, Gill 1); Danbury 4 (M. Murray 1, B. Murray 2, Harris 1)