Columbus East had plenty holes to fill from the departed seniors of last season’s 13-11 sectional runner-up boys basketball team.
Coach Brent Chitty might have found his guys. Three up-and-coming sophomores — Tyler Boyer, Jacob Pierce and Daniel Murphy — have played significant roles for the Olympians this season.
Boyer and Pierce excelled at the junior varsity level, while Murphy excelled on the freshman team last year. Chitty noticed during the summer that he finally found the right guys that can fill the void.
East is 4-6 this season and has been rotating different starting lineups to find the right fit. The core starters have been seniors Matt Frost and Drew Johnson. Seniors Carson Whitehead, Beck Kelley and Lakeevan Whedon also have started games this season to go along with the Boyer and Pierce.
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Having a lot of guys that can start a game is a blessing for Chitty.
“It doesn’t matter to us who starts. They all play, and we’re rotating them through and whoever is hot is hot,” Chitty said. “That’s been the way with our guys. Everyone is going to play. It’s like we have seven starters. We look at matchups, and that’s how we figure out who starts.”
Boyer knew that he was going to be one of the guys that would have to step up his game this season.
“I expected myself to contribute quite a bit,” Boyer said. “The coaches told me that I’d have a role on varsity. So going in, I knew I had to work hard in order to have that chance to contribute.”
With so many guys that can step and put up big numbers of any given night, it can make it tough for opposing defenses to figure out who to guard with so many mouths to feed offensively.
“They can’t just guard one guy,” Murphy said. “If the ball gets to any of us, we can score it at anytime, and that’s what makes us hard to guard as a team.”
Boyer, Pierce and Murphy all said that playing at the JV and freshman levels helped them prepare for the varsity level and better understand how to make more contributions at the next level. They likely will be the core group of leaders for next season.
Murphy and Pierce withstood one big test already this season on varsity. Each hit clutch free throws late in the game in helping the Olympians clinch a victory at crosstown rival Columbus North last month. Pierce went 4 of 4 from the foul line in the fourth quarter, and Murphy also hit two big free throws late.
“We’re not a team that’s going to blow out everybody,” Pierce said. “We play really good defense, and we just try to grind it out and hit our free throws in the end. So we’re used to playing close games, and I think that will only benefit us at the end of the year.”
The unselfishness will have to continue if East wants to put together a lot more wins in the second half of the season.
“They know it doesn’t matter who gets the starts, but more about what you can do while you’re in the game,” Chitty said. “The minutes and seconds that they’re in there, are they doing something for the team? That’s something that they’re figuring out.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Sophomore Stalwarts” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Name: Tyler Boyer
School: Columbus East
Year: Sophomore
Height: 6-foot-3
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Name: Jacob Pierce
School: East
Year: Sophomore
Height: 6-1
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Name: Daniel Murphy
School: East
Year: Sophomore
Height: 5-11
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