Owensboro coach Rod Drake has said throughout the season that their most important game of the year was the first round of the 9th District Tournament. While Drake and the Red Devils have made appearances in the 3rd Region Tournament the norm, he didn’t want his players to overlook the Apollo Eagles Monday night.
Despite Apollo cutting it to single digits in the second quarter, the Red Devils composed themselves and jumped out to a bigger lead en route to the 67-43 win over the Eagles to advance to Thursday’s 9th District Tournament final against the winner of Owensboro Catholic and Daviess County.
“We beat them pretty good the first time and didn’t want our guys coming in overconfident,” he said. “We’ve been in this situation before, being the first team in the district then go out but I thought they played well considering the circumstances. We only had Amari (Robinson-Wales), Kenyata (Carbon) and Cayman (Powell), the only three that really played and didn’t know what to expect.”
Owensboro led 19-8 after the first and despite cutting it to 31-25 in the second, the Eagles couldn’t keep up with the Red Devils.
Drake said they did a few things poorly during Apollo’s run.
“We just made some stupid turnovers,” he said. “We started going up and down the floor, just didn’t value the basketball through that part. We gave them a little momentum and then they came after us. Fortunately, we regrouped.”
Carbon had 11 of his game-high 21 points in the first frame and Drake said he’s seen a lot of players show up at the end of contests but Carbon isn’t one of those.
“He’s ready to go as soon as you tip off,” he said. “It’s the way he is in practice and everything. It’s good for us, for the program because these younger guys see how he goes after it so they follow.”
Robinson-Wales also finished in double digits for the Red Devils as the senior added 17 points in the win.
Apollo graduates several seniors from this year’s squad and Eagle coach Mark Starnes told his team after the game he knew the season was unfair in a lot of ways.
“I just told the seniors, I know as your coach I know I didn’t get to work with you in the summer. There’s a lot of things Covid cheated us out of,” he told them. “That was one of them, not getting to know them early on in the summer. See what guys can and can’t do. We had to lay off in the middle of the season. Then they fought back. I told them one thing you can learn from this, you guys will definitely be moving on and be men one day and have a family of your own but you survived, all of us are going to survive Covid. You can teach your children they’ll be tough times and adversity but if we all stick together and do what we’re supposed to, we can get through it.”
Starns wasn’t able to see his new squad last summer but with many new players next year, he said it’ll be vital and he already has things for them to work on.
“Our bodies have got to get stronger,” he said. “We’ve got to get quicker with our feet. We got to get quicker with getting our shot up and having a quicker release. We just got to play together and learn how to play together.”
Dan St. Clair finished with a team-high 18 points as the Eagles end the season at 5-13.
Owensboro hits the court at 7 p.m. Thursday as they’ll take on the winner of Owensboro Catholic and Daviess County.
Drake said it’ll all about staying loose.
“We’re just going to stay fresh,” he said. “Right now it’s all between the ears with these guys.”
OWENSBORO 67, APOLLO 43
AHS (5-13) 8 11 14 10–43
OHS (10-5) 19 15 16 17–67
AHS: Harrison Bowman 5, Cameron Frantz 7, Luke Girvin 1, Landon Hamilton 7, Dan St. Clair 18, Jaren Stites 2, Jaxon Hardin 3
OHS: Amari Robinson-Wales 17, Maurice Moorman 3, Kenyata Carbon 21, Chris Glover 3, Trey Hinton 2, Matt Brown 7, Talas Taylor 10, Ethan Pendleton 2, Jalen Rogers 3
2021 basketball coverage is presented in part by Rhoads & Rhoads Attorneys at Law.
