With less than a minute remaining and Columbus East trailing Jeffersonville by 28 points Saturday evening, Casey Bartholomew dove for a lose ball near midcourt.
The ball squirted free toward the Olympians bench, where Crase Bergman dove for and wrestled the ball away from a Red Devils player. Bergman was fouled and made both ends of a one-and-one.
While East came away with an 80-52 Hoosier Hills Conference defeat, the effort from start to finish wasn’t lost on coach Brent Chitty.
“I love that effort,” Chitty said. “That’s what we have to have. Our mentality has to be, ‘You can’t worry about records.’ What we have to worry about is how hard we play the game, how smart we play the game and how fundamental we play the game. That’s what we have to focus on.”
Unfortunately for the Olympians (1-10, 0-3), Jeffersonville (5-5, 1-2) had a little too much firepower. While its leading scorer, Will Lovings-Watts, missed most of the first half because of foul trouble, Brandon Rayzer-Moore picked up the slack with 15 first-half points on his way to a game-high 24.
Rayzer-Moore hit three 3-pointers in the game’s first 3 minutes and 5 seconds, and the Red Devils went 5 for 9 from beyond the arc the first 12 minutes. East went 1 for 7 from 3-point range during that span.
“They shot the ball well early, and we didn’t shoot the ball well early,” Chitty said. “I wouldn’t let those guys shoot those shots if they haven’t proved to me in practice they can hit them. I know they can hit them. We just have to get confident and believe in each other that we can knock those down.”
The Olympians trailed 37-24 at halftime and 41-24 a minute into the third quarter when they scored six in a row to get back within 11. But Jeffersonville answered with a 10-0 run to end any thought of a comeback.
Ben Major and Jacob Pierce each scored 12 points to lead East. Tyler Boyer added 10 points and six rebounds.
The Red Devils shot 59 percent (29 for 49) from the field and outrebounded the Olympians 32-15.
“We didn’t do a really good job of blocking out in the second half,” Chitty said. “We have to be able to do a better job on the boards. A lot of those rebounds are second-chance points, so we just have to do a better job. Until we change that, it’s going to be tough for us.”
