WALES — The third quarter has been a thorn in Oak Hill’s side throughout the young Mountain Valley Conference season.
Fortunately for the Raiders, they did more than enough the other three quarters to make up for the thorny third.
Parker Asselin and Jonah Martin drilled four 3-pointers apiece as Oak Hill started and finished strong in a 61-45 win over Carrabec on Wednesday night.
With trapping pressure that forced 14 first-half turnovers and red-hot shooting (6-for-7) from beyond the arc, the Raiders (3-2) found the pace they wanted and led by 14 at the end of one period and by 21 at the half. The Cobras (0-4) dished out some pressure of its own and got Troy Dunphy Jr. going to pull within nine early in the fourth quarter before Oak Hill closed it out with a 12-5 run.
“We’re trying to start a new thing in practice — get the ball out of the hoop (or) rebound and go. That’s what we pretty much did,” said sophomore point guard Dalton Therrien, who finished with 10 points and five assists thanks in large part to that plan of attack. “We slowed down a little bit in the second half but we picked it back up.”
“I was very happy with the way we started,” Oak Hill coach Tom Smith said. “The first half is exactly how I want to play.”
Asselin finished with a game-high 17 points, four rebounds and four steals. Martin came off the bench to score 15 points. Dunphy led Carrabec with 15 points.
Martin started and finished a 10-2 run to end the first quarter with 3-pointers. With Therrien penetrating and kicking out to either Martin or Asselin for wide-open threes, the Raiders jumped out to a 20-6 lead.
“When we’re running the offense the right way, we’re getting the men open that we need to and getting our shots dropping,” Martin said.
“Any time you dribble to the hole, you’ve got a 6-4 guy (6-5 center Derek Gamage and 6-3 forward Luke Washburn) right there and you can throw it up to him or you’ve got two great shooters on the arc,” Therrien said. “As a point guard, I’ve got every option possible.”
Stymied by Oak Hill’s 3/4-court trap, the Cobras ended the quarter with more turnovers than shot attempts (9-8), opening the door for the Raiders to take 11 more shots.
Therrien kept the pressure on in the second quarter with a three-point play, an assist on a backdoor cut by Carlton Banton followed by a jumper and a runner that made it 29-8. Asselin’s drive gave the Raiders their largest lead at 33-8.
“We came out the same way we have the past two years, like we’re expecting to roll over and let them beat us,” Carrabec coach Kirk Robinson said. “But we’re better than we were last year. We’re more physical. But I’m still trying to reach that point where we can come out and be able to press all game.”
Carrabec’s defensive pressure held Oak Hill to just six points on 2 of 13 shooting in the third quarter as it whittled the margin down to 10 at the end of the period.
“The third quarter all year has been our… for some reason they just don’t come out and play,” Smith said. “You can’t take any team lightly in this league, and Carrabec put a run on us. We fell apart. We didn’t handle the pressure and we let them back in.”
The Raiders briefly went back up by 13 before the Cobras pulled to within nine on a pair of John Layman free throws. Martin answered with his fourth 3-pointer to put the cushion back into double digits permanently with 4:37 left.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
