Trying to find a groove

LENOX — Central Decatur shot out on a run on the back of senior point guard Carter Boothe in the first quarter in Lenox Thursday night and never looked back.

Boothe’s 17 points, of which 15 came in the first half, led the Cardinals to a 61-30 win.

Boothe assisted on Central Decatur’s second bucket of the contest, a no-look pass to Grant Atwood and followed that over the next two minutes with two

transition layups, a 3-pointer and another deuce at the rim foran early 13-7 lead.

Those opportunities for the Cardinals early came as a result of Tiger mistakes with the ball.

“We’ve got to take care of the ball. We gave them to0 many opportunities and we didn’t get enough on our side,” Lenox coach Jesse Cox said about his young squad.

The Cardinals’ Michel Evertsen, who entered the game having made just 24 percent of his shots after a hot close to his freshman season a year ago, scored five points consecutively on a 3-pointer right in front of Lenox’s bench and an easy fast-break layup. Evertsen finished the evening with 14 points.

“He’s really been struggling to shoot the ball,” Central Decatur coach Zach Clark said. “Last year he came in as  freshman after Christmas and shot 65 percent from three and teams really struggled because they were trying to box-and-1 us or zone us because of Carter and he’d come in and make a shot and they’d have to get out of it.”

What was an 11-7 CD lead at one point got out of hand as the Cardinals ripped off a 16-0 run.

Evertsen’s second 3-pointer of the half rounded out the Central Deatur scoring for a 34-10 lead after two quarters.

Clark was pleased his team held the Tigers to single-digit quarters over the first three periods by employing their length effectively in a half-court zone defense.

“If you have four single-digit quarters, you’re not going to lose a lot of basketball games.”

That will continue to be a goal for Central Decatur moving forward.

Lenox on the other hand, did get 13 points from sophomore Colton Vieux, but struggled for swaths of the game to find comfort in and around the Cardinal zone.

Cox noted that Carter Still did well penetrating the zone and kicking out passes to the perimeter. As a whole, the team rebounded much more effetively on the glass in the second half.

That helped Lenox to get to the free throw line more on its way to outscoring Central Decatur 16-7 in the fourth.

Most importantly perhaps is not giving up clean chances at the basket, and playing intelligently and under control, something that can only come over time with a group as young as the Tigers.

“We need to move to the next step,” Cox said. “We’ve got to get our turnovers down to 15 turnovers per game.”

Full statistics were unavailable.

CD (65) – 24 10 20 7

Len (30) – 7 3 4 16