Story by: Doug Roorbach/The Sports Herald—
The Marion Giants opened their season with the traditional Wednesday night before Thanksgiving home game, cruising past an outmanned Maconaquah team, 77-58.
The Giants jumped out to a quick 23-12 lead in the first quarter as senior swingman Reggie Jones had all eight of his points, including a rim-hanging dunk with 30 seconds left.
Also scoring eight in the first quarter was Maconaquah’s Wyatt Hughes. The 6-9 junior would add eight in the second and third quarters as well before taking a seat on the bench once the game was out of reach in the fourth. He wound up with a game-high 29.
“He had a great game–he shot the ball well,” said James Blackmon, Marion’s head coach, “…We gave up 12 points to him on second chance shots. That’s one of the things we don’t want to do with our defensive rotations.”
Blackmon spoke after the game, noting that Marion was working on parts of its game, including, “Chemistry, ball movement, defensive rotation; we just want to execute well on both ends of the court. I thought that half the game we executed well, defensive rotation was good. In a game like this we’d like to see the guys execute a little better on offense.”
The Giants’ offense sputtered a bit in the second quarter, scoring just 14 points while giving up an equal amount on some nice backdoor cuts by Maconaquah. Marion’s Tim Leavellhad nine of the Giants’ 14 points in the quarter on three three-point shots. “Shooting the ball, that’s one of his strengths,” Coach Blackmon said, “We were able to move it around and Timmy got some open looks.” He wound up leading the Giants in scoring with 21.
It was Blackmon’s son Vijay who got untracked in the third quarter with 12 of his 18 points as the Giants pulled away from the Braves with a 22-12 burst. Coach Blackmon explained after the game that there had been a reason for Vijay’s slow start: he had been involved in a car accident earlier in the day and was stiff and sore.
“Vijay was saying ‘I’m OK, I’m 100%,’ but watching him…I thought he finally got loosened up in the second half,” Coach Blackmon said, “…You could kind of tell that he was still bothered by that accident this morning.”
In the fourth quarter the Giants went deep into their bench, but the starters still got minutes as well, despite the game being out of reach. “I wanted that first group to get a little chemistry,” Blackmon said.
He especially wanted to see them work out some kinks on the offensive end, he said. “If we call a set, I would like to see them run it,” Blackmon said, “We settled, we took a quick shot off the first option instead of looking for our third and fourth options.”
Although he was pleased with the win, Blackmon said that the Giants had some work to do. “We’ve got to play our game, we can’t play to the competition,” he said, “For 32 solid minutes we’ve got to play Marion Giants basketball, and we can’t play down to a team’s level.”
Game notes: 6-10 junior Gage Pinkerton’s playing time was limited by foul trouble; he had 6 points and 4 rebounds…Zach Randolph, Jr. got into the game in the fourth quarter and scored a basket for the Giants with 3:07 to go…Jordan Smith scored 16 points including shooting 8-10 from the line and added 5 rebounds.
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