The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Smooth sailing over Bay
Vermilion takes advantage of Sunahara foul trouble to get win
Vermilion turned in one of its best performances of the season Feb. 10 as the host Sailors beat Bay, 62-46, holding the Rockets to their lowest scoring output of the season in what coach Kurt Habermehl called a signature win.
Despite their 16 wins, the Sailors have struggled this season holding onto big leads and maintaining tempo from start to finish, and each of their three losses have been decided by two points or fewer.
But with a solid defensive game plan against a Bay team that scored 105 points the previous night, Vermilion held the Rockets well under their 75.1 pointsper-game average and earned a big confidence boost as the postseason quickly approaches.
“We’ve played six games in 11 days now so to end with this is a fantastic victory for us,” Habermehl said.
“We’ve lost three buzzer-beater games to teams we thought we could get but didn’t, but we got that signature win tonight that we’ve been looking for . ... In prior situations with a big lead like that we might have played a little passive and I thought we kept our foot on the gas tonight.”
Bay (13-5) nabbed an 18-16 lead
after the first quarter, but Joby Pfeil opened the second with a quick five points for Vermilion and the Sailors regained control.
Pfeil scored 10 of his 22 points in the second quarter while Bay was held to single-digit scoring in both the second and third quarters.
“It was a little bit of a shootout in the beginning. We didn’t really want to keep that pace, so we slowed it down a bit,” Pfeil said.
“(Bay’s) a high-scoring team. … We had to beat them by getting rebounds and playing great defense.”
Bay was plagued by foul trouble early as R.J. Sunahara sat much of the game, picking up three fouls before halftime and getting his fourth less than two minutes into the third quarter.
With Sunahara on the bench, the dynamic drastically changed for the Rockets and no matter what lineup coach Jared Shetzer put on the court, the Vermilion defense harassed them all night.
Bay finished 18-of-60 from the field compared to Vermilion’s 22-of-40.
“We scored 105 points last night but you wouldn’t know it. We made 19 3s last night but you wouldn’t know it. We had 22 assists but you wouldn’t know it,” Shetzer said.
“It’s hard for us to play when R.J. went to the bench with three fouls. I mean, that hasn’t happened to us all year, so with him going out early and then sitting and trying to play different guys, it just didn’t work out.”
Sunahara finished with 14 points and six rebounds. On the season, the senior averages 23.9 points and 12.1 rebounds.
“We needed to slow (Bay) down when they had the ball because obviously they shoot the ball very well and they can really run the floor well and (Sunahara) is just a fantastic player,” Habermehl said.
“So we really wanted to take away the point guard when we scored a basket so we double-teamed him to slow them down a little bit and I thought the kids just did it to a T, they were fantastic.”
Mason Montgomery had a game-high 23 points and 12 rebounds for Vermilion and Reese Miller added 15 points and seven rebounds.
The Sailors get a couple of days off before traveling to Clearview Feb. 13 for another nonconference game, while Bay continues its push for a Great Lakes Conference championship at home against Valley Forge.
“(This win) shows other teams that we’re a team to beat,” Pfeil said. “We’re going to try our best to make a (postseason) run that we think we can make and it’s just a big win for us and a great confidence booster.”