By Malcolm Butler
Peyton Odom scored 20 points and Parker Robinson added 15 to lead St. Frederick to a 76-36 win over Cedar Creek Tuesday night in District 2-1A action.
The Warriors (11-9, 2-1) used a tenacious run-and-jump half court defense to force turnovers that led to transition buckets while never allowing the Cougars (12-9, 1-2) to get into any type of offensive rhythm.
“It comes down to the atmosphere and the noise in the gym,” said Cedar Creek head coach Lance Waldron. “I couldn’t communicate to my players. They couldn’t communicate to each other. That caused us all of our troubles.
“We couldn’t get where we needed to be. We only have so many timeouts. Even when we called a timeout it was hard to communicate to the guys. It caused a lot of problems for us.”
Jack Bell opened the game with a corner three for the Cougars, giving them an early 3-0 advantage. However, it was short-lived as St. Frederick rattled off 14 straight points over the next five minutes of the quarter to build an 11-point lead.
Bell added an elbow jumper and a late quarter three-pointer to score eight of the Cougars nine first quarter points as they trailed 20-9 after the opening stanza.
The Cougars struggled to successfully attack the Warriors half-court, physical defense as the Warriors scored the first 16 points of the second quarter to push the lead to 36-9 with just over three minutes to play before the half.
“They were out for blood,” said Waldron. “They wanted to send a message with this game it looked like to me. They overwhelmed us and just beat us down.
“We put it on the floor too much. We would come down and we were one pass maybe, and we were shooting a shot and it was off-balance most of the time. We never seemed to get back to our fundamentals. We seemed to push the panic button the entire game.”
Cougars leading scorer Jake Doan was harassed all night by the Warriors, constantly being double and triple teamed throughout the contest. Doan, who ended the game with 16 points, scored six points in the closing few minutes before halftime but the Cougars trailed 43-19.
“This is just one game,” said Waldron. “The wheels aren’t falling off even though they beat the mess out of us. We are a better team now than we were three games ago. Sometimes that is hard to see because of who you are playing.”
According to Waldron one of the bright spots for the Cougars was sophomore post Blake Robinson. The all-district linebacker for the Creek football team has started to get more minutes over the past few games and is providing the Cougars some inside play.
“Blake really came in and gave us some muscle and some size,” said Waldron. “We are going to need that moving forward. It has taken him some time to figure out what we are wanting and to work within the system with the other guys. He has really giving us something we needed. The last two games he has really done a nice job out there. Adding Blake to the mix has given us some muscle that we really, really needed.”
Bell added 10 points in the loss while Landon Hall chipped in with five points off the bench and Robinson added three points.
Cedar Creek will face OCS Friday night in Monroe.
