Lima Senior’s Amarion Glenn gets the ball away from St. Francis’ Elvis Syroka during Tuesday night’s game at Lima Senior. See more high school basketball photos at LimaScores.com.
Lima Senior played three good quarters and that was more than enough to produce a 61-44 win over Toledo St. Francis in boys basketball on Tuesday night at Senior High.
Brandon Moore’s 14 points led Lima Senior (11-4, 5-4 Three Rivers Athletic Conference). Jagger Hutchins and Je’Kel Cotton had 10 points. Jameson Heck’s 15 points led St. Francis (11-6, 4-5 TRAC). Vince Ferguson added 13 points for the Knights.
It was Lima Senior’s second win over St. Francis this season. The Spartans triumphed 53-44 on Dec. 20 in Toledo.
“Three out of four – I wasn’t happy with the third quarter,” Lima Senior coach Quincey Simpson said.
“I thought we were too relaxed. We missed a lot of shots around the rim but we picked it up a little better in the fourth quarter. We’ve got to be able to finish a little better when we’ve got teams down,” he said.
Lima Senior led 32-12 at halftime after it had dominated nearly every facet of the game in the first 16 minutes..
St. Francis had more turnover (8) than shots (7) in the game’s first 10 minutes and by halftime the Knights had barely more shots (15) than turnovers (11). And they connected on only 5 of the 15 shots they could get off in the first half.
Lima Senior led 12-4 after one quarter when St. Francis scored in the first minute of the game then went scoreless for nearly seven minutes until it got its second field goal of the game with 28 seconds left in the first quarter.
The Spartans took control of the game in the second quarter when they hit 7 of 11 field goal attempts, including three 3-pointers.
St. Francis battled back to cut the lead to 10 points, 40-30, in the final minute of the third quarter but that was as close as it got.
Cotton ended the third quarter the same way he had ended the second quarter when he hit a 3-pointer to make it 43-30. And from there the Spartans built their lead back up to 20 points by the final minute of the game.
“I thought we played really good in the first quarter but I didn’t think we were playing fast enough. Ideally they wanted to slow us down and I thought they did a decent job of that even though they weren’t scoring,” Simpson said.
“The second quarter we picked up full-court and got some turnovers and played a little faster and I thought that was the difference in the second quarter.”
One big difference from the first time Lima Senior played St. Francis in December was that Moore was held scoreless in the earlier game.
“Brandon gave us a doughnut the first time. He played well tonight. He’s going to continue to play well. When he plays well we’re obviously a better team,” Simpson said about the 6-3 senior guard who leads Lima Senior in scoring at 12.5 points a game in his first year as a starter.
Reach Jim Naveau at 567-242-o414.
