Hawks slide by Birds behind 24-point outburst by Jeremy Watson; Southwestern's Baumgartner tosses in 28
PIASA - Virtually every team has a nobody in their starting lineup, whether if he’s the center or a guard, he usually has no impact and is just a role player.
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Coming into the season the Carrollton Hawks had plenty of somebody’s but they did have one nobody and his name was Jeremy Watson.
However he’s no longer a nobody after his performance against the Southwestern Birds.
“He was the unknown and he took advantage of that,” Carrollton head coach Jeff Krumwiede said.
“I had a pretty good game for my first time starting,” Watson said. “I felt like I had a lot of easy shots and a lot of rebounds that got me those shots. They’re still points.”
Watson went off for 24 points in his first ever varsity start and propelled Carrollton in a 65-53 victory over Southwestern in the Hawks first game of the season in Piasa on Tuesday night.
“He’s very capable,” Krumwiede said. “That’s the reason why he’s in there. He’s a great offensive player and I thought he played some good defense tonight too… He had a big time coming out tonight for his first varsity start.”
Colin Baumgartner led all scorers with 28 points and scored the first 15 of the game for the Birds going into the second quarter.
Baumgartner ended the first half with 19 points, but was held to 9 after halftime as the Hawks made astute adjustments on him.
“He’s a great player,” Watson said. “Hindy (Levi Hinderhan) had a lot of fouls to start off on him in the first half, but in the fourth quarter I felt like we contained him a lot better than we did in the first half.”
Sophomore Justin Bailey chipped in 8 points.
Luke Gillingham finished with 15 points, which is a scoring tally that most players would be proud of, but it was un-Gillingham like performance in terms of the ways he scored. He is known to be an accurate long-range shooter, but missed all of his three-point shot attempts and scored half of his points on layups and the other half on free throws.
“That’s the bar that’s set for Luke is that we’re concerned that maybe he didn’t have a great game but he chipped in 15 points for us, Krumwiede said.
Jerrett Smith added 10 points and Cole Brannan followed up with 9.
Southwestern (3-3) has always given Carrollton (1-0) solid early season games and last night was no exception.
“We haven’t won here very often,”Krumwiede said. “We’re 16-16 in my time at Carrollton and a lot of losses have come here at this gym.”
Southwestern head coach Jason Darr felt that what decided the game was his team giving up too many close looks at the basket for Carrollton.
“We gave up too many two-foot buckets, transition baskets, things like that,” Darr said. We were giving up too many high percentage shots and allowing too much penetration. That’s what killed us.”
Both teams played each other close for most of the game.
In the first quarter with Carrollton leading 14-11 going into the second frame as Baumgartner scored all of the Birds points in the quarter.
The Hawks were ahead 18-14 early on, but the Birds quickly came back with a 10-4 run to take a 24-22 lead.
Carrollton quickly responded as Jayce Arnett swished a three-ball and Gillingham hit a fade-away, baseline floater to make it a three-point game.
The teams were tied 29 all at halftime, but for the first 29 seconds of the third quarter it was all Southwestern as they scored four quick points.
Krumwiede called a timeout and the Hawks proceeded to go on a 17-8 run and led 46-41 as they stepped up their intensity on defense in the backcourt by getting turnovers and turning them into points.
As Baumgartner was being limited in the second half, he still was catching the eye’s of the Hawk defenders, which opened up room for the Southwestern guards to knock down shots, but they only drained two three-pointers and a handful of other mid-range shots.
“Because (Baumgartner) had a big game in the second half we had some decent outside looks and we didn’t hit them,” Darr said. “I thought we passed up a couple we could’ve took and then some of them we shot just didn’t go in.”
However the Birds managed to knot things up at 46 at the end of the quarter when Caleb Robinson drained a three-pointer at the buzzer.
The Hawks got out to another five point lead until Caden Heyen sank another trey to trim Carrollton’s lead to 52-51, but that’s as close as Southwestern would get.
Gillingham stepped up in the second half by scoring 11 of his 15 points and sank four straight free throws in succession to put the Hawks up 56-51 in the fourth and final frame.
“We got a chance to get enough of a comfortable lead that we could spread it out and use our guard play and take Baumgartner out of the game a little bit,” Krumwiede said. I know that was big for (Gillingham), it was a senior stepping up because he struggled from the line early in the game.”
Watson and Brannan helped ice the game away at the charity stripe as well.
The Hawks were 18 of 27 from the line, but made 13 out of 16 in the fourth quarter.
“We played really hard and coach had us prepared for this game and I had full belief that were going to win the entire time,” Watson said.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
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Dan Brannan also contributed to this story
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