Upper Scioto Valley’s Maddox Underwood watches his shot during Friday night’s game at Temple Christian. See more high school basketball photos at LimaScores.com.
Jackelyn Johnson | The Lima News
After giving up 72 points in its first loss to Shawnee last week, Upper Scioto Valley head coach Dre White was determined to get his team’s defense back on track.
The Rams responded with a tenacious defensive effort to shutdown Lima Temple Christian and post a 59- 29 win in a Northwest Central Conference title Friday night.
USV improves to 5-1 for the year and 2-0 in conference play. Temple Christian slips to 2-4 for the year and 0-2 in NWCC action.
This was the lowest USV has held a team this year, point-wise, and the Rams held to the Pioneers to single digits in all four quarters. In its four wins, the Rams gave up average of 39.5 points.
“We have been locked in defensively. We have had games like that and it is good to see that,” USV head coach Dre White said. “We gave up 72 to Shawnee which wasn’t us. That is the most we have given up in a while so that was focus all week was to get back to who we are and our identity and I thought we did a good job of that.”
Coming into the game, USV’s top priority was shutting down Landon Callahan who had been averaging better than 20-plus points in the early season. Callahan was limited to three points.
“We wanted to make Callahan a priority,” White said. “He is a senior and he is a good scorer who can get to the rim and shoot the mid-range and he can shoot the deep ball. I think he was averaging about 24 a game so we wanted to make him a priority and we asked two of our guys to handle him and really he is a group project type of player and I was really happy with collectively what we did tonight.
As a team, Temple Christian was 1 of 17 from 3-point land.
“The offense struggled all night long and that really hadn’t necessarily been a problem for us,” Temple Christian coach Bruce Bowman said. “Credit goes to them. They did a nice job defensively. We missed open shots and didn’t finish around the rims at times and I feel we left some points on the table there.”
Rebounding also played a major role in the Rams’ victory as USV controlled the boards and did a lot of damage by getting second and third opportunities off missed shots.
“We really lost the battle on the glass in the first half,” Bowman said. “We gave them a lot of opportunities for put backs and second shots, etc., and then add not being able to score and that is a problem so I did feel like our intensity picked up in the third quarter and we played a lot better basketball and we could have used that for 32 minutes.”
White said, “We got us down for 19 offensive rebounds and that is a priority for us as well. A lot of that is we missed a lot of wide open shots right at the basket but we stayed with it and I thought our kids played hard to get some second chance opportunity and I thought that was a key for us as well.”
White added that he had USV out-rebounding them 19-3 on the offensive end.
Rams’ Blaine Castle, who finished with 10 points, grabbed seven rebounds with five of those being offensive and he put back three for six points.
“I was really pleased with Blaine,” White said. “He had a great week of practice. It is between his ears and a confidence thing so it is good to see him getting established early and doing a nice job. He had 10 tonight and I think that is a season high for him so it is really good to get established inside.”
USV’s Maddox Underwood led the team with 21 points with 17 of those coming in the first half to help the Rams open up a 14-9 lead after the first quarter and a 32-4 advantage at halftime. In the second half, the USV never let the lead slip under 18 points.
Also having a double-digit scoring outings were Alex Sanders who pumped in 13 points and grabbed five rebounds and Drew Stephens who scored 10 and grabbed eight rebounds.
For Temple Christian, Jabaz DuPree finished with 11 points. Dawson Clay grabbed nine rebounds.
Reach Jose Nogueras at 567-242-0468.
