St. Vincent boys basketball coach Bruce Valleroy knew that his team could play better than what he had seen from their first half performance.
They flipped the switch in the second half, especially the third quarter.
St. Vincent outscored Jefferson 20-5, including a 18-0 run to end the quarter to cruise to a 58-32 victory over Jefferson R-7 in the first game of the St. Vincent round-robin tournament on Monday.
“We could have been up a lot more in the first half,” Valleroy said. “In the opening minutes of the first quarter we kept getting steals, but were missing a lot of lay-ups. Offensively we have some things to work on, but I thought we played well overall. We needed to see where we were as a team by playing an actual game.”
St. Vincent was led by John Wibbenmeyer’s 15 points, while Shawn Koishor added 12, and Phillip Ernst had nine points. Brian Besand chipped in seven.
For Jefferson, Colby Ott had 15 points, but just two in the second half. while Ethan Boyer had eight points.
“We did a good job of adjusting to Ott,” Valleroy said. “He had 13 of their 19 points at halftime and we also were able to disrupt the passing lanes and get out and guard the three-point line. We knew coming in that they wanted to shoot a lot of threes.”
Jefferson (0-2) was coming off a loss to Hancock before Thanksgiving, but had an influx of players as the Bluejays finished their football season two days prior in the Class 2 final four.
“Jefferson will be a good team once they get their whole team together and get some practices in. When we see them again I expect it to be a good game.”
St. Vincent took advantage of that lack of practice in the second half.
Jefferson’s Ethan Boyer swished a three-pointer with 5:54 left in the third quarter to shrink the St. Vincent lead to just four points, but from there it was all Indians.
Koishor had back-to-back baskets off nice cuts along the baseline to stretch the Indians lead to double digits. Besand scored shortly after that with a nice floater in the lane. Luke Brickhaus and Ernst also joined in the scoring, while Kyle Steinbecker hit the only three of the run. It was the only points that did not come from the free throw or a basket inside the paint.
What was a two possession game quickly turned into a 46-24 lead entering the final quarter for St. Vincent.
The run was stretched to 20-0 until a free throw by Drew Breeze stopped the run at the seven-minute mark of the fourth.
“I think we just picked up the intensity coming out of the lockeroom,” Valleroy said. “I noticed that they stared to get a little tired out there as well and we created some turnovers. That’s to be expected for Jefferson because they aren’t quite in basketball shape yet. I thought we got some good shots by beating them down the floor a couple of times.”
St. Vincent forced 18 turnovers in the game, while being forced into 19 themselves.
“That’s something we have to clean up a little bit,” Valleroy said. “But as we play more, I think we can trim that number down.”
Despite the turnovers, Valleroy was impressed with his team’s ability to defend.
“John Wibbenmeyer, Shawn Koishor, and Phillip Ernst are all wide bodies with long arms,” Valleroy said. “That’s going to be the difference in how well we do this year. I think we can score enough points, but can we stop the opponent? We will find that out as we go along.”
St. Vincent will wrap up the round robin tournament with a game against Valle Catholic on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
