Adena spoils Shori, EC opener 71-40

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FRANKFORT — East Clinton opened its 2020-21 boys basketball season with a tough opponent in the Adena Warriors.

Adena, sectional champions two straight seasons, played well early and cruised to a 71-40 win over the Astros.

“This isn’t a one day turnaround,” first-year head coach Phillip Shori said. “We need time to figure out how to play this way. From buzzer to buzzer we did not stop playing (hard tonight). We got after it. Until our culture is where we want it to be, we’re not going to see massive leaps (with wins).”

East Clinton’s season had a hiccup when players had to quarantine because of the pandemic, putting the team approximately two weeks behind.

“When you look at it, we asked them … 90 percent of our team plays football … so we asked them to come from football, go to a new coach, learn a brand new offense, learn a brand new defense, then quarantine for two weeks at the start, then go play a team that was 18-5 last year and brought back 4 of its 5 starters,” said Shori. “We asked them to do the impossible.”

East Clinton lost the last two meetings with Adena, 83-40 last season and 66-42 in 2018-19. The last win for the Astros came in 2017-18 when EC came out on top 88-63.

The Warriors reached the Division III Athens Regional semifinal game in 2019 and finished with a 20-7 record.

Logan Bennett of Adena got the home team off to a big start, scoring 9 in the first period as the Warriors went up 17-7. The Adena lead was extended to 38-16 at the half and steadily increased from there.

Branson Smith had a big third period, scoring 11 of East Clinton’s 13 points but it wasn’t nearly enough. Dakota Collom had 7 points in the final period.

The Astros were 6 for 11 at the free throw line.

Branson Smith finished with 18 points. Bennett had 18 for Adena.

“We did a lot of great things (tonight),” Shori said. “There were plays that we said ‘A couple days ago we weren’t making that play.’ Heads have to stay high. We’re not looking back. Continue to look forward, get better day after day.”

SUMMARY

Dec 1, 2020

@Adena High School

Adena 71 East Clinton 40

A^17^21^17^16^^71

EC^7^9^13^11^^40

(71) ADENA (fg-3fg-ft-tp) Throckmorton 2-0-0-4 McDonald 3-0-3-9 Garrison 5-0-5-15 Bennett 8-1-1-18 Sykes 7-0-1-15 Britton 0-0-0-0 Kerns 3-2-0-8 Cheesebrew 0-0-0-0 Rawlings 0-0-0-0 Mathews 0-0-0-0 Vickers 0-0-2-2 Shipley 0-0-0-0 TOTALS 28-3-12-71

(40) EAST CLINTON (fg-3fg-ft-tp) B Smith 6-1-5-18 McClure 0-0-0-0 Collom 4-0-1-9 J. Smith 1-0-0-2 Runyon 2-1-0-5 Tolle 2-0-0-4 Davis 1-0-0-2 Daniel 0-0-0-0 Bean 0-0-0-0 Norman 0-0-0-0 TOTALS 16-2-6-40

https://www.wnewsj.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/12/web1_LOGO-ec-letter.jpg

By Mark Huber

[email protected]

Reach Mark Huber at 937-556-5765, via email [email protected] or on Twitter @wnjsports

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