Poor shooting plagues Hawks in loss

LID WAS ON

There was a lid on the basket when we got the ball inside, and when we kicked it out to open shooters they had good looks that missed”

Jonny Swanson, Central Lee Head Coach

BURLINGTON — The shots, Central Lee boys basketball coach Jonny Swanson said, will fall.

They didn’t fall for the Hawks in Friday’s 52-33 loss to Notre Dame, but it wasn’t because they were bad looks.

The Hawks (0-2 overall, 0-2 SEI Superconference South Division) held the Nikes (2-0, 2-0) to just two points in the third quarter, but Notre Dame pulled away with a 12-0 run to start the fourth quarter.

“We had a ton of good looks,” Swanson said. “And we got looks that we practice every single day, ones that we’re trying to get. There was a lid on the basket when we got the ball inside, and when we kicked it out to open shooters they had good looks that missed.”

Brayden Wyrick had 20 points for the Hawks, but Kaden Swan was the only other Central Lee player with a field goal in the second half.

“Brayden had a heck of a night,” Swanson said. “It would have been nice if some others would have gotten shots to fall, but they just wouldn’t go in.”

Central Lee trailed 31-20 at halftime, but outscored the Nikes 8-2 in the third quarter. Wyrick scored inside with 6:02 left in the quarter, then hit two 3-pointers in a 23-second span with less than two minutes to play to get the Hawks to within 33-28 heading into the fourth quarter.

“He kept us in the game,” Swanson said. “Defensively, in the first half, we played man-to-man, and we had a hard time guarding them. They’ve got some really quick guards, with length, and we had a hard time defending them. So we went to a zone defense in the second half, played really well with it, and rebounded the heck out of the ball when they started missing shots.”

But Notre Dame’s Jack Drew and Griffin Kies hit back-to-back 3-pointers to open the fourth quarter, starting a run that ended on Drew’s layup with four minutes to play. Central Lee didn’t score until Swan’s bank shot with 3:31 to play.

“They've got some guys who can shoot the lights out,” Swanson said. “So they just kind of got hot there for a minute.”

Shay Stephens led Notre Dame with 18 points.

Cold shooting doomed the Hawks in Tuesday’s loss to Holy Trinity, and it repeated itself in this game. Swanson, though, knows there’s a lot of season ahead.

“We're right in these games,” he said. “We're getting the looks that we want. We just are struggling to take that lid off and get those buckets to fall. But you know, we've got really good kids who fight their tails off, and they know that if they keep fighting, they keep fighting, they're going to keep themselves in the game to give us chances to win. Our defense has been pretty good for the most part and our energy and effort has been pretty good. So as long as we're doing those things, you know when those shots fall, we'll be winning those games.”