Pioneers open new season with 76-46 victory over Molalla
Opening the season with a new coach and new attitude, the Sandy boys basketball team crushed the Molalla Indians 76-46 Tuesday Dec. 2 at Sandy High School.
“We came out focused on executing our game plan and the kids battled hard all night,” Sandy head coach Jason Maki said. “I couldn’t be happier and more proud of them.”
Tom D’Aboy led the Pioneers with 13 points and Ben Hopper added 12 as twelve different players scored. Valentin McCarthy pulled down seven rebounds and James Myrvold D’Aboy added four as the Pioneers grabbed 32 rebounds as a team.
“It wasn’t perfect, but it was a great start,” Maki said. “We need to work some more on getting open shots but this was an excellent start.”
Molalla scored the first basket a minute and a half into the game, before the Pioneers scored 13 straight points and led 18-8 after the first quarter. D’Aboy scored seven points in the first quarter to help Sandy jump out to a lead.
Molalla tied the game at 23 with 4:20 left in the first half but Kevin Trosko was fouled underneath the basket and made both free throws to give the Pioneers the lead again. Sandy outscored the Indians 11-5 to lead 36-28 at half time.
Sandy came out in the second half and played a man to man defense that forced Molalla into some bad shots as the Pioneer defense held the Indians to three points in the third quarter to pull away.
“We saw that they were taking a lot of three’s so we wanted to keep them from getting any open shots,” Maki said. “Our defense came out and kind of smothered them and they took a lot of forced shots and we converted when we needed to.”
The 76 points is the most scored by the Pioneers since 2007 and is the biggest margin of victory in over four years.
For more indepth coverage, please pick up a copy of the Dec. 10 edition of The Sandy Post