Ben Sylva
Following a lopsided defeat against Bloomington South on Friday night, Columbus East was determined to have a little better showing in Saturday’s game against Seymour.
The Olympians came closer against the Owls, but couldn’t quite get within striking distance. Seymour was able to keep East at bay for most of the night to post a 51-42 Hoosier Hills Conference boys basketball victory.
“After (Friday) night, I thought we played a really solid first half,” East coach Brent Chitty said. “Do you want to make excuses, or do you want solutions? We have to have better effort, which comes from energy. We have better energy with attitude.”
The Olympians (1-10, 0-2) led 5-2 early, and the game was tied 7-7 after one quarter after Ben Sylva scored a basket just before the buzzer. But then the Owls (7-4, 3-1) scored the first eight points of the second quarter and built the lead to 22-11 at halftime on a 3-pointer at the buzzer by Andrew Levine.
Seymour extended the margin to 34-20 after three quarters and led by as many as 17 on two occasions early in the fourth quarter. East got back to within 47-37 on three free throws by Zane Moravec with 45 seconds remaining and 49-40 on a 3-pointer by Sylva with 24 seconds left, but that was as close as it would get.
Sylva finished with game highs of 21 points and seven rebounds to lead the Olympians, who played without second-leading scorer Julius Dailey because of sickness. Will Rieckers added eight points.
“Their help defense is really good,” Sylva said. “When we tried to drive, they were just automatically there. They ball-screen, they did a good job hedging out on it, and they just work hard on defense all the way around.”
Landon Fritsch led the Owls with 13 points. Eli Meyer scored 12, and Marcus Brooks added 11.
Chitty was able to find a bright spot in East’s 31-29 advantage in the second half.
“Now we know we can do this,” Chitty said. “Let’s get better. We understand we’re undersized. We understand we have some sickness. We’ve played through some tough times, so let’s keep grinding away and not take a step back.”
