First Posted: 2/6/2015
LIMA — It was a case of good news/bad news for Perry on Friday.
The good news was the Commodores sprinted past Temple Christian 59-39 in a Northwest Central Conference game for their 14th straight win.
The bad news was standout senior Jared Poling — fresh off breaking the program’s all-time career scoring record Tuesday — suffered an injury in the second quarter. Early in the quarter, Poling drove the lane and went up for a layup, got fouled and landed hard.
Poling sat the rest of the game with an icepack on his left hand — his non-shooting hand.
“It’s swelling up pretty good on him,” Perry coach Matt Tabler said. “He’s in a little pain right now but that’s the extent we know. We won’t know any more till the morning when he gets it X-rayed.”
Without Poling, Perry was still in command for the vast majority of the game. Senior Xavier Monford scored a game-high 19 points and Jacoby Lane-Harvey added 13 points.
Temple Christian came out hot early, hitting three 3-pointers in the first four minutes for an 11-5 lead.
Then the Commodores hit the accelerator and sprinted to a 24-1 run to end the first quarter and start the second to claim a 29-12 lead with 5:16 left in the half.
Perry made 10-of-13 from the field in the run and force eight turnovers.
“We had the transition going,” Tabler said. “We forced them into some bad shots and got out and started running.”
By the end of the half, Perry led 41-22. The second half wasn’t quite as seamless as Temple’s defense tightened up and forced 12 turnovers to edge back in. But the closest the deficit ever got was 50-35 late in the third.
“We competed hard in the second half but we had a long way to go,” Temple coach Bruce Bowman said. “The second half of the first quarter and the entire second quarter was just a wave we didn’t respond very well to.”
Markus Howell and Michael Breaston scored 10 points each for Temple.
