Offense, defense click for Archbold

12/15/2006

ARCHBOLD The Evergreen boys basketball team ran head-first into the perfect storm at Archbold last night.

The host Blue Streaks made 57.9 percent of their shots from the floor, including 7-of-11 from behind the 3-point arc. On defense, Archbold forced the Vikings to shoot poorly and into 11 turnovers while outrebounding them by 12.

The result was a convincing 60-36 Archbold victory.

[The offense and the defense] went hand-in-hand, Archbold coach Doug Krauss said. The defense has to be a constant because you don t always know about your offense. We ve been playing fairly solid defense all season, and our offense stepped up.

The victory lifted the Blue Streaks to 4-0 and 2-0 in the Northwest Ohio Athletic League, while Evergreen dropped to 1-3 and 0-2.

It was the Archbold offense that took center stage first as the Blue Streaks made 6-of-10 shots from the floor in the first quarter to jump to a 16-10 lead.

In the second period, the Streaks made four 3-pointers, giving them six in the first half.

Once Archbold started making 3-pointers, it was pretty much over, Evergreen coach Jerry Kiefer said. Our game plan was to stop [Gene] Goering and to stop [Josh] Wyse to make the other kids help. Our kids did what they were taught to do, but [Archbold] kept hitting their 3s.

Then, when we start guarding straight-up, Goering and Wyse kill us. It was a double-edged sword.

The other Blue Streaks stepped up, as five different players hit at least one 3-pointer, and seven different players scored in the first half.

To make matters worse for the Vikings, the Archbold defense was stifling. It limited Evergreen to just four second-quarter points all of which came on one play. Chris Pfund was fouled while making a 3-pointer at 5:22, and he made his free throw.

The Blue Streaks bracketed Pfund s basket with eight points to build a 32-14 lead at the break.

That was the difference in the game, and especially in the first half we were making shots, and they weren t, said Goering, who finished with a game-high 24 points and added 12 rebounds.

Goering and Wyse combined for four of the Blue Streaks seven 3-pointers. Wyse finished with eight points, and Justin Rupp added nine.

Archbold s 3-point barrage forced the Vikings to guard farther away from the basket in the second half, opening up drives into the lane and the low-post moves for Goering. The result was a Blue Streak offense that scored all 17 of its fourth-period points thanks to drives to the basket.

When you make shots, that s kind of contagious and it carries over to the defensive end, Krauss said. You re more enthused to play defense, and then you hit some more shots. We had a good run going there for a while.

While the Archbold offense was scoring, its defense was clogging the lane by leaving different players unguarded to prevent the back-door cuts and 3-point shots that are the staple of the Evergreen offense.

They do such a great job in their Princeton-style offense you have to worry about their back-door cuts, and we wanted to try and take that away from them, Krauss said.

Pfund, Andrew Pinkelman, and Nick Weissenberger topped Evergreen with seven points each.