Columbus East had a tough time trying to contain Perry Meridian’s top player and Butler commit Jayden Taylor in Friday night’s boys basketball contest.
Taylor scored 18 points, including four 3-pointers in the first half, leading to a game-high 30 points, to hand the Olympians a 54-37 loss.
“(Taylor) is a very nice player, and he draws a lot of attention,” East coach Brent Chitty said. “When that attention goes to him, he finds those people that can hurt you, and that’s what happened tonight to us.”
Taylor scored 11 of the Falcons’ first 13 points of the game to give them a 13-5 lead. Ben Major got a basket in the paint to cut it to 13-7, but a 3-pointer at the buzzer from around half-court by Reggie McDonald gave Perry Meridian (5-3) a 16-7 first quarter lead.
Ben Sylva started the second quarter for the Olympians (1-7) with a 3-pointer, but then the deficit grew to double digits following a transition dunk from Taylor to grow the Falcon lead to 20-10. The teams traded 3-pointers to close out the half with East trailing 23-13.
The Olympians started the third quarter with a lot of energy, and it helped start a 13-5 run to cut the deficit to 28-26. That would be as close as East would get. Perry Meridian finished out the quarter outscoring East 7-2 to lead 35-28 heading into the final quarter.
The Falcons hit 12 straight free throws late in the fourth quarter to seal the win.
“We didn’t shoot the ball well in the first half, but we didn’t take bad shots,” Chitty said. “We started knocking some down in the third quarter and got back into things. We did a better job blocking out and rebounding than we did (Tuesday) night (against Columbus North). They scored a bunch of points on free throws at the end. We just have to hit some shots and get some energy going. We have to take good shots, and we got to knock them down. We’ve proven we can do it.”
Major finished with a team-high 11 points for the Olympians. Tyler Boyer finished with eight points, and Will Rieckers added seven.
East will travel to take on Shelbyville at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
