After a slow start in Friday night’s crosstown clash, Columbus North had asserted itself enough to take a double-digit lead, but then Columbus East came creeping back into it.
With two minutes left in the third quarter, the Olympians had clawed their back to within 36-27. East had the momentum and the home crowd in its corner.
Then, the Bull Dog defense took over.
North turned up its pressure and scored the next 20 points to effectively put the game away. The Bull Dogs led 56-27 with three minutes remaining and went on to post a 62-34 victory to snap a three-game losing streak to the Olympians.
“I just thought our defensive intensity throughout the game wore them down,” North coach Paul Ferguson said. “The defensive intensity is what the key was. I thought we had a lot of ball pressure, and once we turned them over a few times, we were able to kick the ball ahead and get some easy baskets.”
Junior Blake Barker was the main beneficiary of that. He finished with a game-high 19 points.
Senior Will King came off the bench and played a big role during the 20-0 run, hitting 5 of 7 free throws during the spurt.
“It started on our defense, and our defense is what led to offense,” Barker said. “We knew we needed to pressure the ball. I think our defense really got us going. We slowed down and took good shots.”
While the Bull Dogs improved to 5-1, with their only loss coming by four points at Class 4A No. 8 Fishers, the Olympians are 1-4 after facing a tough early-season schedule.
East is a young team with only two seniors on the roster and no senior starters. Still, the Olympians managed to get out of the gate fast against North on Friday, scoring the game’s first six points and jumping out to an 8-3 lead before the Bull Dogs got going.
“We were confident in our ability,” Barker said.”They had a pretty good start, and we kind of had a rough start, and we settled down and we came back and got them.”
Ted Schultz is sports editor for The Republic. He can be reached at [email protected] or 812-379-5628.
