Troy runs all over Falcons
BY JAKE LOURIM
STUDENT CORRESPONDENT
TROY — It had been months since Troy won the league championship with a 17-5 record and the
Colts returned all-state junior James Young. So a raucous Troy student section showed up to the season-opener Monday in anticipation.
It wasn’t disappointed.
Young scored 23 points and junior Joe Leonard added 22 points as Troy pounded Utica Ford Monday, 81-45, in a non-conference boys basketball game.
Leonard shot 9-for-15 from the floor, and junior Zak Noor added six points, four rebounds and five assists off the bench. The two stepped up in the absence of senior Evan Mahone, who did not play due to internal reasons.
The duo played with scrappy intensity, the two smallest players grabbing loose balls.
“Intensity on defense, talking, helping,” Noor listed as his goals.
“When I found out I was going to start on the bus today, I was nervous,” Leonard said. “I was just thinking, I’ve got to go hard on defense and the offense will come.”
The Falcons hung around for a while, even preserving momentum after Young’s dunk, because Troy missed four layups in the first quarter.
“Being the first game of the year, in the first half, we were sloppy with a lot of pieces ofour game,” Troy coach Gary Fralick said. “After we made a few adjustments at halftime, we decided we were going to play a little bit harder, then we wore them down.”
Troy started with Young at the top of a 1-3-1 zone, and Young picked off four steals. Butthe Colts couldn’t capitalize in transition. Still, the long, athletic lineup of Young, Leonard,Noor, and sophomore Maceo Baston smothered Ford.
Seniors scored just four of Troy’s 81 points.
The Colts also moved to an 2-3 zone and a man-to-man scheme to confuse Ford.
“It made our opponents not know what the defense was,” Noor said, “and it made them
think a lot.”
“We made it a little bit harder for them to make a pass into the passing lane,” Fralick added, “and we were a little bit quicker on our feet and anticipated passes.”
Up only six with less than two minutes to play, Troy showed off its quick-strike ability with a 9-2 run that sent the Colts to the locker room up by 13.
Leonard took over in the second half. He opened it with five points in 90 seconds, where
Ford turned the ball over four times before taking a shot. Baston’s own 7-0 run made it 56-33, and Young, Danny Wunderlich, and Leonard tacked on buckets. When Leonard scored
five points in another 9-0 run, it made it 71-35, and coach Gary Fralick started to play his substitutes.
“We have a really offensively good team,” Leonard said. “We’ve just got to work on the defense, work on the little things, and we’ll be a good team.”
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