DELPHI — North Montgomery boys basketball will head into the new year looking to improve on the offensive side of the ball. After falling to North Newton on Wednesday in the semi-finals of the Delphi Kitchen Classic the Chargers took on Taylor in the third place game on Saturday. For the third straight game (all without junior Kelby Harwood) the Chargers were held under 40 points and fell to the Titans 47-34 as they ended the tournament with a fourth place finish by going 1-2.
The Chargers started out looking good and leading 11-8 after a quarter, but thing slowly went down hill there after. Nursing a 16-13 lead, Taylor scored seven straight to take a 20-16 lead and went into halftime leading 22-18. Jarrod Kirsch began the third with a three to cut the lead to just one, but after that North wouldn’t score again until the 1:25 mark and watched Taylor go on a 12-0 run. The Chargers kept fighting but would never cut the Titan lead to under 10 .
“We’re just struggling to score the ball plain and simple,” North Montgomery coach Chad Arnold said. “We’re getting good chances, but just end up missing open shots and layups. We turned it over a lot in the second half with just silly mistakes. We tried to beat their press by heaving it and ended up throwing it out of bounds. If we slow down then we wouldn’t do that kind of stuff, but right now when you’re not scoring it’s very difficult to win ball games.”
Cam Enlow paced the Chargers with 11 points and drilled three three’s in the loss. Ross Dyson added eight, Noah Hopkins and Jarrod Kirsch scored five, Colten Arnold three, and Corbin Meadows two. It’s been an adjustment for the Chargers the last three games without having a player like Harwood on the floor. But until he gets back, Arnold knows other guys are just going to have to step up.
“We all know that Kelby does a lot for us, but we have to have guys step up in his absence,” he said. “Even with him being out defensively today we just jumped on guys who can’t shoot and didn’t stay in front of our guys like we should have. You should never jump on a shot fake and that bit us too many times today. We have to stay down and be more disciplined.”
For the game North Montgomery (4-5) shot 13-37 (35%) from the field, 5-16 (31%) from three and 3-7 (43%) from the foul line. They grabbed 21 rebounds and turned the ball over 13 times.
Taylor (7-3) was led in scoring by Javionne Harris who scored 18 points in the win. Connor Binnion added nine, while both Drew McClatchey and Keyshawn Galloway chipped in eight. Christian Hall rounded out the scoring with four. For the game the Titans shot 20-35 (57%) from the floor, 3-9 (33.3%) from three, and 4-8 (50%) from the foul line. They grabbed 21 rebounds and turned the ball over nine times.
The Chargers will be off until they open up play in the Boys Sugar Creek Classic on Jan. 5-6 when the Chargers will get a re-match with county rival Southmont (3-3). The Chargers were bested 50-42 back on Dec. 1 by their county rivals.
“We know that South is going to one want to beat us again so we have to learn from that first game,” Arnold said. “They’re big and physical just like us. We’re going to take a little break and give the kids some time off but will get back to work here soon.”
