As bad as the year 2020 has been on sports and in the world outside of sports, the Columbus East boys basketball have ended 2020 on a better note.
The Olympians picked up their first win of the season 61-53 against Evansville Central Wednesday afternoon.
This was the first game for East since being in quarantine the last couple weeks. The team may have been fatigued after having several practices leading up to the game, but coach Brent Chitty was pleased with the quality minutes that he got from the bench.
“I thought if we could have guys give us a few minutes like Crase (Bergman), Julius (Dailey) and Casey (Bartholomew), those were big minutes they gave, and they contributed,” Chitty said. “I was really pleased with our effort for four quarters.”
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East (1-4) found themselves trailing 9-0 in the first 90 seconds of the game, but came back to finish out the first quarter outscoring Evansville Central (2-3) 11-5, but still trailed 14-11. A couple of baskets from Jacob Pierce and a putback from Will Rieckers tied the game at 17-17. A 3-pointer from Ben Sylva gave the Olympians their first lead of the game 20-19 with under five minutes to play in the first half. A 3-pointer from Tyler Boyer extended the lead to 26-21, but the Bears came back to cut the Olympian lead to 26-24 at the break.
East grew the lead to 38-30 following a Sylva 3-pointer, but Evansville Central was still knocking on the door and cut the lead to 42-37 after the third quarter. The Olympians extended to its largest lead of the game after a Rieckers 3-pointer to make it 47-39. A Daniel Murphy basket and two free throws from Tyler Boyer extended the lead to 53-40 with under four minutes to play in regulation to eventually seal the win.
Rieckers finished with a game-high 22 points, Pierce had 13 and Boyer added 11 to lead the East scoring.
“I loved our effort,” Chitty said. “I thought all year long we played really at certain points of games, but then sometimes we just shut it down or we don’t finish. I thought today, we finished. We had the energy and effort and I thought we played with a better basketball IQ.”
A scheduling update for East, its scheduled game against Martinsville on Tuesday has been canceled due to Morgan County becoming a red county on the COVID-19 dashboard on the Indiana Department of Health website. In its place, the game with Columbus North that was originally scheduled for Dec. 18 is now scheduled for Tuesday night with a 7:30 p.m. varsity tipoff.
