The Indians were a confident team Friday night in a 70-46 runaway over visiting Southeastern. They jumped to a 20-6 lead in the first quarter and led 33-15 at halftime. Cross scored 15 points and junior backcourt mate Trent Koning scored 17 to lead a balanced boxscore in which six players scored at least seven points.
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“We have so many more guys that can score the ball than we’ve had in years past,” Cross said. “This will be one of the best teams we’ve had in a while.”
Cross, Koning and junior Isaiah Ramey share the guard roles, a luxury that helped the Indians on Friday when the Trojans (1-2, 0-2) tried to keep the ball away from Cross and Koning. Ramey handled the point a lot and scored eight points. And forwards Caleb McKinion and Hunter Baldwin rebounded well and scored nine and seven points, respectively.
“We’re sharing the ball, we’re all playing defense, running in transition — tough to beat right now,” Cross said.
After two five-win seasons and a 13-11 season last year after the slow start, head coach Ryan Godlove likes the growth he’s seen in Cross, who recently signed to play across the street for Division II Cedarville University.
“Colby’s taken the next step,” he said. “Before you could put him in the category of great scorer. I feel like he’s becoming a more complete player. And because he’s got other guys around him that can score and can create, it’s allowing him to distribute the ball a lot more than he has in the past. As the season goes he’s starting to embellish that more and more, to take pride in finding guys, to make the extra pass. Tonight was not his highest scoring game, but I thought tonight was one of his best games.”
Godlove was glad to be 3-1 coming into Friday’s game, but he wasn’t happy with the way his team was executing a lot of the little things that add up to important victories and will be needed in OHC tests next week against Greeneview and Greenon.
“This week we’ve put a lot of emphasis on cleaning up those little things on both sides of the ball, especially on the defensive end,” he said. “Tonight we put together a complete game and we fixed a lot of the things that we worked on this week. I like the way we played tonight, and I think that gives us a step in the right direction.”
Southeastern second-year coach John O’Laughlin is working to mold a team with three returning starters — Bryce Grim, Cooper Bair, Tucker Eriksen — and a group of players up from the JV team, including Kole Vollrath who scored 14 points Friday. O’Laughlin expects his team to improve, but “we have to guard better,” he said.
“It’s a huge jump from JV to varsity,” he said. “It’s faster, stronger, but we’ve just got to come together as a team and figure out what we do best, each player. We need to figure it out quick.”
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