Wolverines use third-quarter explosion to easily beat rival
MABEN – A night after the East Webster Wolverines blew past rival Eupora for a Class 2A, Region 2 win, the two teams met again on Saturday night in Cumberland for a rematch that did not count towards the division mark.
The importance of the game still felt urgent for the Wolverines.
After struggling to get offense consistency in the first two quarters, East Webster exploded in the third quarter outscoring the Eagles 28-5 and putting the game away as the Wolverines rolled to a third-straight victory since the start of the new year 62-26.
“We’re not a highly explosive offensive team, but we’ve tried to juice that up and get it going,” East Webster head coach Jon Ginn said. “We talked about it at halftime that we
were doing a good job defensively, but we just weren’t putting any points on the board ourselves. We made a couple of adjustments offensively, but the biggest thing is we started hitting shots.”
The game played out similarly to the one the previous night as the Wolverines had almost an identical first quarter. After leading 13-8 on Friday after one frame, East Webster was up 14-8 after the first on Saturday and followed that up by scoring just 13 in the second quarter as well as the lead was 26-15.
Ginn was excited about the defensive piece in the first half but needed more from his offense. The defense continued its work in the third quarter, but shots began to fall and Chandler Hodges started to emerge with 11 points in the quarter after scoring just two in the first half.
“Defensive intensity got up and little Bryson Johnston was a spark plug (Saturday,” Ginn said. “He’s a freshman and he was all over the place, diving on the floor, coming up with steals, (and) hit a 3. The dunk by Chandler got everybody going, too. It was just a factor of things.”
The Wolverines scored more points in the third quarter than they did the entire first half combined and they allowed just five points by the Eagles. The fourth quarter allowed playing time for the younger East Webster players for a second-straight night as they cruised to the win.
For interim Eupora coach Drew Gray, it was frustrating to lose the game, but he gave props to Ginn and the Wolverines for making the changes at halftime.
“I thought we played hard,” Gray said. “I told them that we’ve just got to keep competing. That second half was just a veteran coach out-coaching a newbie. He hit me with a few things that I wasn’t ready for, but I’ll learn and get better. We’re slowly starting to play together. Our body language is starting to get better on the bench. It’s just about playing for each other and loving basketball all the time, not just when you’re in the game.”
Eupora (0-5) was led by Tyjuan Hughes as he had 14 of the team’s 26 points. East Webster had 13 points from Hodges and 11 from Reid Gatlin. 11 of those 13 came in the big third quarter that helped spring the team to a win.
“We’ve been talking to him about being more aggressive and going to the goal more,” Ginn said of Hodges. “He can shoot it, but he’s 6-6 and we need him attacking the rim. I think he got a little taste of it and just kept going to the rim. The guys started looking for him.”
Both teams get back into Region 2 play on Tuesday as the Eagles try to get their first win of the season playing at Bruce. The Wolverines (9-4) can get in the driver’s seat in the district title race as they welcome Calhoun City to town on Tuesday night.
“They’re always athletic and they’re so well-coached,” Ginn said of Calhoun City. “They lost a ton of seniors last year, but they’ve got four or five guys back who bring them some kind of experience from last year. When they wear Calhoun City on their shirt, they feel like they’re supposed to win. We’ve got to execute. We’ve got to be Superman stopping the train coming down the tracks because it’s going to be barreling.”