Defense keys composed Ewing
EWING -- In the past, the Ewing High boys basketball team would have lost a game like last night's contest against Notre Dame.
The Blue Devils were riding high with a five-point second-quarter lead as the Irish struggled offensively. Notre Dame got it going and turned its deficit turned into a six-point lead.
In recent seasons, following former coach Walt Bitner's retirement, the Blue Devils didn't pick themselves up off the carpet.
"We talked about that," senior guard Antoine Rogers said. "One game at a time, we are ready to win and stop making the little things that cause us to lose. We have to fix the little mistakes. It's about time we started winning games like this."
After going into the locker room behind by five, the third-seeded Blue Devils responded with a stellar defensive effort that limited No. 6 Notre Dame to just 10 second-half points, and the Blue Devils knocked off the Irish, 49-39, in the Mercer County Tournament quarterfinals.
The Blue Devils advanced to today's semifinals at Mercer County Community College, where they will face No. 2-seed Hightstown, a 51-43 winner over No. 7 Hamilton, in a 4:30 p.m. semifinal.
"Our defense was great," said senior swingman Will Brown, who netted a game-high 15 points and six steals to go along with his eight rebounds.
"In the second half, we played better transition defense. In the first half, most of their points came in transition, where we didn't get back on 'D.' It's all about hard work. We practiced our defense all week."
Rogers had just drained a 3-pointer with 6:33 left in the first half to give Ewing (16-5) a 19-14 lead. The Irish (14-8) would fire back with a 15-5 run to go up 29-24 at the break. A dunk by Ryan MacZinko (eight points) and a three-point play off the offensive glass by Matt Medici keyed the Irish.
"We just talked about, especially in the second half, that we have to get better shots," head coach Shelly Dearden said. "Our shot selection wasn't the best at that time. I told them that we have to run our offense and get better shots. The easy shot was the layup since our outside jumpers weren't falling today -- even some of our layups weren't falling, but we got the ball in the right people's hands."
Notre Dame managed to score just six points in the third quarter. In addition, the Irish went 4:57 without a basket in the second half. If it wasn't the steals by Brown or Anthony Hunter (five steals), it was the interior defense of Stephen Shimko (four blocks) and Brown (two blocks).
"We did a good job of recovering from a slow start," Notre Dame head coach Todd Shellenberger said. "We played a good second quarter. I just thought that Ewing turned up the intensity and pressure in the second half."
Medici led Notre Dame with 11 points and 11 rebounds (six offensive). Rogers added 11 points and five rebounds for the Blue Devils, while Stephen Shimko (seven rebounds) and Jerome Christie (seven rebounds) both had eight points.
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