by JOHN HOWLEY / sportingpumpkin.com
Circleville held the lead at the end of the first quarter and never gave it up in beating visiting Paint Valley 64-45 Wednesday night as part of Circleville’s Holiday Classic.
A pair of free throws from Slater Search gave the Tigers the lead and a three at the buzzer from Riley Jenkins made it 14-10 Circleville to finish the first.
The Tigers had a 30-22 lead at the half and were up 42-28 after three.
Circleville had its largest lead of the night after a basket by Search with five minutes left made the Tigers’ advantage 55-33.
“We wanted to speed the game up a little bit. We feel we’re stronger in transition and the last few games we’ve kind of struggle with that,” Circleville coach Cody Carpenter said. “We did a much better job with that.”
Circleville had seven players contribute points with four reaching double figures. Ed Kirk led the way with 14 while Drew Thornsley, Briley Cramer and Search each added a dozen.
“Briley is our main scorer, and they did a good job with him. And he did a really good job finding his teammates,” Carpenter said. “Briley had six assists because they weren’t really double teaming him, but every time he got to the paint they left to help, and he found the open guy.
“Drew Thornsley gave us a really big effort off the bench tonight. That’s the spark we need from him,” Carpenter added. “We knew the type of spark he can give us defensively, tonight it was a lot offensively, too.
“Ed Kirk played pretty solid in the post.
“I’m proud of our guys and proud of our effort.”
The Tigers were doing a good job most of the night in finding their teammates, but struggled a bit to finish as they were 25-56 from the field.
“We shared the ball really well, but we’re just worried about contact instead of playing through it,” Carpenter said. “We kind of hesitate a little bit in some of our transition layups, trying to slow down and wait for the contact.”
Despite the shooting percentage being lower than what they would like, the Tigers had 20 offensive rebounds and turned a number of those into points. Overall, Circleville had a 39-29 rebounding edge on the Bearcats.
Search led CHS with 10 while Cramer had nine and Kirk had eight.
Carson Free led Paint Valley with 15 points and 10 rebounds.
The Tigers will turn around and host Westfall Friday night as the Holiday Classic continues.
The Mustangs are coming off their first loss of the season — 68-54 to Minford in the first game Wednesday.
“Those are the fun games where everybody gets riled up for it,” Carpenter said. “We’re excited to host them and we hope there’s a big crowd.”
Circleville 64, Paint Valley 45
Paint Valley — Jeremy Cain 1-0-2, Logan Long 2-0-4, Jase Rinehart 2-1-6, Carson Free 5-4-15, Braylon Robertson 5-0-12, Gavin Kingery 3-0-6. Three-point goals — Rinehart, Free, Robertson (2). Total — 18-52 5-7 45.
Circleville — Preston Hulse 2-0-5, Drew Thornsley 4-4-12, Briley Cramer 5-2-12, Jack Kline 1-0-3, Slater Search 5-2-12, Riley Jenkins 2-0-6, Ed Kirk 6-2-14. Three-point goals — Hulse, Kline, Jenkins (2). Total — 25-56 10-17 64
Quarter scores 1 2 3 4 F
Paint Valley 10 12 6 17 45
Circleville 14 16 12 22 64
