Sunday, March 05, 2000
Purcell holds off CNE
BY CAREY HOFFMAN
Enquirer contributor
The subject of pressure was on the minds of both Purcell Marian coach Mike Gergen and Clermont Northeastern coach Ken Tracy after their teams met Saturday.
Gergen said his team relieved a pressure building all season by winning a sectional title. Tracy's take on pressure dealt with the short-term — the 16-0 first quarter blitz laid on his team thanks to Purcell's trapping defense.
“I'm very pleased for our players,” Gergen said after Purcell held off CNE 57-44 to claim the Cincinnati Division II upper bracket sectional title at Anderson High School. It is Purcell's first sectional title since 1995. “They've had a lot of stuff on their shoulders all season and, to me, the toughest thing about the tournament was going to be getting out of the sectional.”
The apprehension Gergen feared can be a killer force in the tournament, as CNE found out Saturday. Purcell's free-form trapping defense named “amoeba” got inside the CNE team's heads early and kept the Rockets scoreless through the first quarter and to just two points through the first 13 minutes of play.
“The press catches a lot of people off guard,” said Purcell junior swingman Keith Jackson, who had a game-high 25 points. “They know we're going to do it, they just don't know when. We could feel what was happening out there, see it in their eyes.”
“We weren't doing anything out there,” Tracy said of watching his team in the first quarter. “They were almost like zombies. It was like they were in a different place.”
CNE had hoped to beat Purcell's initial traps by spreading the ball around, then attacking the basket with a number's advantage because of the 2-on-1 nature of trapping. Once the Rockets got over the shellshock of what happened early, they showed that strategy could work.
Foul trouble backed Purcell off a bit and after halftime, CNE was the aggressor, outscoring Purcell 16-5 in the first 5:39 of the second half to pull within 37-26.
“The way we played in the second, third and fourth quarters was us doing what we needed to do,” said Tracy, whose 18-5 team enjoyed the winningest season in CNE history this year.
Poor foul shooting — 8-of-16 overall — by Purcell helped CNE make one final run.
Purcell advances to a Division II district title game, where it will meet Bellbrook in a game tentatively scheduled for Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at University of Dayton Arena.
CNE (44) - Lafferty 2 0 4, Shepherd 1 1 3, Lloyd 2 4 9, Thacker 1 0 2, Allen 2 5 9, Fishback 2 0 4, Holthaw 2 0 4, Ritter 3 3 9. Totals: 15 13 44.
PURCELL MARIAN (57) - Salamone 2 0 5, Fullman 1 0 2, J. Cooper 3 2 8, Fulks 3 0 6, H. Cooper 4 3 11, Jackson 11 3 25. Totals: 24 8 57. CNE 0-10-18-16-44 Purcell Marian 16-16-12-13-57
3-pointers: CNE - Lloyd; PM - Salamone. Records: CNE 18-5, PM 20-3.
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