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Business News
Hartville, Ohio —
There is little doubt as to how the Lake Center Christian boys basketball team wants to play this season. The Tigers aim for a deliberate pace and games that feature scores in the 40s and 50s, an approach that yielded mixed results in games against Heartland Christian and Cornerstone Christian.
Coming off a last-minute win against Western Reserve in their season opener, the Tigers (2-1) doubled their success with a 47-41 road triumph over the Heartland Christian Lions. As they had in the win against Western Reserve, the Tigers utilized their size advantage to control the paint, and that opened up the perimeter for senior forward Scott Hefty, who led the way with 19 points. Senior forward Mark Slayman had his second strong outing in as many games, notching eight points and 10 rebounds.
“We definitely have four guys who are all capable scorers, and we had a lot of guys who put in the time and worked hard over the course of the offseason,” LCCS coach Eric Schlabach said. “It’s good to see that work pay off to show that there are results for those guys.”
Schlabach pointed to the pace of the game as an indication of how his team needs to play, slower and with fewer possessions. The win was much closer than the 22-point defeat the Tigers hung on Heartland last season.
“Heartland was vastly improved, and they played hard. It was definitely not an easy game,” Schlabach said. “I didn’t feel like we played our best, and they defended really well. It was a struggle for three quarters and the first three minutes of the fourth.”
LCCS was able to break away following a timeout Schlabach called when the Lions (2-1) tied the score on an open jumper.
After the timeout, the Tigers rotated the ball well, passed it to the corner and senior guard Alex Armstrong hit a 3-pointer to give them the lead back for good.
If the Heartland Christian game was a textbook example of the style LCCS needs to play to win, the matchup with Cornerstone Christian the next night was an example of what can happen if an opponent is able to impose its faster tempo on a contest. The result was 56-49 loss for the host Tigers.
Utilizing both full- and half-court pressure, the Patriots (4-1) forced 18 LCCS turnovers, including 13 in an uneven first half that saw LCCS head to the locker room down 25-15. The full-court pressure gave the Tigers some trouble, but it was the half-court pressure Schlabach viewed as the bigger challenge.
There is little doubt as to how the Lake Center Christian boys basketball team wants to play this season. The Tigers aim for a deliberate pace and games that feature scores in the 40s and 50s, an approach that yielded mixed results in games against Heartland Christian and Cornerstone Christian.
Coming off a last-minute win against Western Reserve in their season opener, the Tigers (2-1) doubled their success with a 47-41 road triumph over the Heartland Christian Lions. As they had in the win against Western Reserve, the Tigers utilized their size advantage to control the paint, and that opened up the perimeter for senior forward Scott Hefty, who led the way with 19 points. Senior forward Mark Slayman had his second strong outing in as many games, notching eight points and 10 rebounds.
“We definitely have four guys who are all capable scorers, and we had a lot of guys who put in the time and worked hard over the course of the offseason,” LCCS coach Eric Schlabach said. “It’s good to see that work pay off to show that there are results for those guys.”
Schlabach pointed to the pace of the game as an indication of how his team needs to play, slower and with fewer possessions. The win was much closer than the 22-point defeat the Tigers hung on Heartland last season.
“Heartland was vastly improved, and they played hard. It was definitely not an easy game,” Schlabach said. “I didn’t feel like we played our best, and they defended really well. It was a struggle for three quarters and the first three minutes of the fourth.”
LCCS was able to break away following a timeout Schlabach called when the Lions (2-1) tied the score on an open jumper.
After the timeout, the Tigers rotated the ball well, passed it to the corner and senior guard Alex Armstrong hit a 3-pointer to give them the lead back for good.
If the Heartland Christian game was a textbook example of the style LCCS needs to play to win, the matchup with Cornerstone Christian the next night was an example of what can happen if an opponent is able to impose its faster tempo on a contest. The result was 56-49 loss for the host Tigers.
Utilizing both full- and half-court pressure, the Patriots (4-1) forced 18 LCCS turnovers, including 13 in an uneven first half that saw LCCS head to the locker room down 25-15. The full-court pressure gave the Tigers some trouble, but it was the half-court pressure Schlabach viewed as the bigger challenge.
“We knew going in that would be a big key, us taking care of the basketball,” the second-year coach said. "A faster pace and more possessions would benefit them, and we got hurried on offense and were dribbling too much against the half-court pressure.”
By the time the Tigers made their halftime adjustments, the deficit was too much to surmount against a Cornerstone team that won 15 games last season and returned many key contributors for this season. LCCS limited its turnovers to five in the second half, but Cornerstone did enough to hold the lead. Part of the Patriots’ success was being able to battle LCCS to a near-draw on the boards, as Cornerstone held a 26-23 edge for the game.
The contest also marked the third-straight game in which a different player led LCCS in scoring. Senior forward Trevor Rainieri notched 23 points and seven rebounds, amassing nearly half of his team’s scoring on the night. Hefty was the only other LCCS player in double digits with 12.
“Trevor hadn’t scored a lot in the first two games, but he had a really big night,” Schlabach said. “A lot of it (different leading scorers) depends on the team we're matching up with.”
Another encouraging sign in the defeat was the play of reserves Taylor Miller and Caleb Schroll, neither of whom scored much, but both players were able to provide solid ball handling when senior point guard Alex Armstrong went to the bench. Of the team's 18 turnovers, Miller and Schroll only had two between them.
The overall result wasn’t positive, but three games into a new season, the Tigers have already begun to establish an identity that should carry them throughout the year.
