CRESTLINE — Crestline has been battling illness all week, but you would never know it watching the Bulldogs Saturday night.
After coming off a 41-40 win over Mansfield Christian on Friday, in which coach Tyler Sanders said his team didn’t play well, the Bulldogs picked up the effort in the second half against Plymouth.
Crestline held the Big Red to just one point in the third period and four in the fourth period in a 48-31 win. Crestline improved to 4-3 on the season with the win.
But it was the manner that the Bulldogs won the game which was the most impressive.
Trailing 26-20 at the half, Crestline came out in an aggressive man-to-man defense and never let Plymouth shooters get uncontested looks.
“(Crestline) picked up the pressure a little bit and got in our face a little bit and we don’t like that, we don’t like pressure,” Plymouth junior varsity coach Jarrod Furr said. “We tend to crumble under pressure, and we have to execute. We didn’t screen well at all. We have to get people off our shooters, and we didn’t.”
Sanders said that this was the best defensive effort he has seen from his team.
“That’s what I’ve been waiting on,” Sanders said. “I know that it’s in us, even after we lost Isaiah (Perry), and he’s one of our best on the ball defenders. And everybody just stepped up and guarded hard, got into the passing lanes, and just made life miserable for their offense.
I’m really proud of our guys. That was a great win.”
Crestline had to contend with Plymouth scorers Clayton Miller, Josh Beebe, and Zeth Goth, but limited Miller to seven points, Beebe to nine and Goth to eight.
“Obviously, we know who their players are, Goth, Miller, and Beebe,” Sanders said. “Beebe got going early a little better than I would have liked. But Connor (Lusk) is battling through sickness, flu, whatever, but to limit Miller, he did great. Everyone just stepped up and did a great job.”
“We didn’t take care of the basketball well at all,” Furr said. “We didn’t execute, and we didn’t do what we needed to do to get the win today. It’s just a lack of focus for us.
“The third quarter has always been our worst quarter and it shows,” he added. “We come out at halftime, and, for whatever reason, we come out flat.”
Crestline forward R.J. Johnston kept the Bulldogs in the game in the first half, hitting a pair of 3-point shots and scoring 10 of his 19 points.
But in the second half, after a Lucas Cochran basket gave the Bulldogs a 29-27 lead with 2:31 left in the third period, it was Cochran who took over, scoring 18 of his game-high 25 points in the final two periods.
Cochran and Johnston scored all 14 Crestline points in the fourth period.
“Lucas, we know that’s in him, but right now our whole team is sick, but he came alive in the second half,” Sanders said. “Just getting him to play more under control served him a little bit better.
“R.J., just hitting big buckets for us in the first half when we really needed them to keep us in it,” Sanders added. “He really stepped up for us.”
Furr said that the Big Red took great pains to slow Cochran down, to no avail.
“(Cochran) is an athletic kid,” Furr said. “He’s a good player. Strong, used his speed to get around. When we put a quicker player on him, he just used his size against us.”
Sanders felt that a win such as this one could be a pivotal moment for his basketball team.
“Plymouth is a good basketball team, and they have three dudes that really have been starting for three years,” Sanders said. “That’s a good basketball team. To get a win after a night that we didn’t play well, and to come out and play hard in the first half when we couldn’t get the ball to drop. To play in the second half the way we did shows just how good I think that we can be.
“We still have a long way to go but I still think that as long as we’re willing to buckle down, we can still hit a high mark that hasn’t been hit here in a long time,” he added.
Plymouth won the junior varsity game, 29-21. Layne Bushey paced Plymouth with eight points. Wyatt Cheney scored six for Crestline.
Box score
Plymouth 14 12 1 4 — 31
Crestline 14 6 14 14 — 48
Plymouth (2-6): Shots 13-36; 3-pt. shots 2 (Clayton Miller, Nick Cole); Free throws 3-6; Rebounds 19; Turnovers 16. Scoring: Clayton Miller 3 0 7, Trace McVey 2 0 4, Josh Beebe 4 1 9, Zeth Goth 3 2 8, Nick Cole 1 0 3.
Crestline (4-3): Shots 15-40; 3-pt. shots 3 (R.J. Johnston 3); Free throws 15-23; Rebounds 24; Turnovers 13. Scoring: Connor Lusk 0 1 1, R.J. Johnston 6 4 19, Isaiah Perry 1 1 3, Lucas Cochran 8 9 25.
JV: Plymouth 29-21.