Cooper Horn
Columbus North offensively couldn’t buy a basket for much of the Saturday night’s boys basketball game against Seymour.
The Bull Dogs got the points late in the game, but the Owls deficit was too much to overcome in a 56-46 loss.
“Columbus North is a good basketball team, there’s no doubt about that. They’ve got a lot of good pieces. They‘ve got a lot of really good guards, and they’ve got good size in the middle. They got a lot of good role players, too. They play hard,” Seymour coach Kirk Manns said. “I think their 3-2 zone confused our guys a little bit. We had a hard time finding the gaps and figuring out what to do, and what we didn’t do was turn the ball over. Our guys did a nice job of following the game plan and staying consistent with it.”
Points were hard to come by for North, which took its first loss of the season.
The Bull Dogs defense kept the Owls (2-0) at bay, and North (2-1) trailed only 6-3 after the first quarter and 16-7 at halftime.
Trailing 28-13 after three quarters, both teams kept trading fouls. Both teams converted on the free throws to keep Seymour ahead 41-22 midway through the fourth quarter.
Cooper Horn led the Bull Dogs charge in the fourth by converting several three-point plays and layups to keep them in striking distance.
They cut it to 52-43, which was the closest North got since the first half. Time eventually ran out on the comeback.
“We got up to about 18 or 19, and then it became helter skelter and turned into an open gym type of situation,” Manns said. “Cooper Horn is a really strong player. He’s a tough guy, and was able to get into the open court. He was trying to make as much happen as possible, and he’s a handful. He turned the ball over a few times. We didn’t react the way we should with contact and turning it over. There was a lot of fight in that Columbus North team, and they kept fighting.”
For the Bull Dogs, Horn finished with a game-high 26 points. Ty Ferguson had eight and Carson Dibble added five.
For the Owls, Marcus Brooks finished with a team-high 24 points. Andrew Levine had 11 points and Landon Fritsch added nine.
