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SPORTS
HHS beats Spring Valley
HUNTINGTON -- After an entire season in which things had yet to come together at once, the second quarter of Thursday night's contest with Spring Valley was a welcome sight for Huntington High boys basketball coach Ron Hess.
Hess watched his team lock down defensively and convert turnovers into points in transition in a breakout quarter that led the Highlanders to a 69-43 win over the Timberwolves.
"We did a great job of switching off on our men tonight, getting down and playing defense without getting beat off the dribble," Hess said. "When you play defense, you get steals and rebounds that allow you to push the ball and get easy shots."
After Austin Keyser's field goal with 2:04 left in the first quarter pulled the Timberwolves within 11-10, Huntington High limited Spring Valley to just three field goal attempts in the rest of the first half by playing suffocating defense.
Spring Valley's offensive scheme is extremely technical in the half-court set, so for the Highlanders to limit the Timberwolves to just three field goal attempts in that span, it required lots of communication and team-oriented play -- something the team had lacked in its early-season struggles.
Following Keyser's basket, Huntington High reeled off 21 straight points -- 17 of which came from Chancelor Wooding and Toquan Hayes.
Wooding started the game hot and outscored the Timberwolves by himself in the first half, hitting four 3-pointers and scoring 16 points as the Highlanders took a 36-15 lead into the locker room. He finished with 19 points in the contest.
While Wooding was the outside threat, Hayes came off the bench with lots of energy and had 17 points for the Highlanders, who had 11 different players score.
Keyser led the Timberwolves with 15 points as the Huntington High defense focused its efforts on Spring Valley leading scorers Eli Parker and Hunter Waugh. The duo combined for nine points in the game.
"If you let them run their sets and get open sets, they are going to knock their shots down," Hess said. "They are a great shooting team and they do a good job setting picks, but we did a great job switching off and once we did that, the guy on the weakside rotated over to help-side defense. We looked very good tonight."
For Huntington High (5-7), it is the second-consecutive game in which the team has dominated the game with its defense. The Highlanders will take their momentum on the road Friday night at Riverside.
Spring Valley (4-10) lost for the fourth time in a five-game stretch in which they've played Ironton, George Washington, Fairland, Mountain Mission (Va.) and now Huntington. The Timberwolves look to get back on track Friday with a home contest against Nitro.
SPRING VALLEY 10 5 9 19 -- 43: Keyser 15, Parker 5, Campbell 6, Waugh 4, Wellman 5, Kilgore 3, Brewer 3, Steele 2
HUNTINGTON HIGH 16 20 14 19 -- 69: Miller 6, Sayles 6, Wooding 19, Demoss 2, Brown 3, Tubbs 2, Hayes 17, Crews 1, Nicks 7, Shackelford 5, T. Martin 1
