JV Blazers capitalize on turnovers, win ugly game

DEC. 14, NELSON H. KOBREN MEMORIAL GYMNASIUM–

In his year and three games of coaching the Blair JV boys' basketball team, head coach Richard Porac had only won two games in a row once. Strangely enough, the game where it finally happened again gave Porac little to celebrate.

The Blazers (2-1) won extremely ugly, routing a small Walter Johnson (1-2) squad 46-30. It was ugly, but it was still a win. Nevertheless, Porac chided his team afterwards for a lack of energy out of the gate.

"The thing that really bothered me,” Porac said, "was that we didn't come with intensity for all 32 minutes. We lost the first quarter of the game.”

Porac said that he was lucky that WJ proved an inferior opponent tonight, noting that there were multiple games last year where Blair started sluggishly, couldn't recover and lost. "Last year this problem killed us. We still have got to develop a killer instinct.”

It was a very sloppy first quarter, in fact. After the first eight minutes of play, the Wildcats led Blair 8-6. Blair committed eight turnovers in that quarter alone, a problem that would dog them the whole game. WJ came up with 18 steals in the game.

Still, the Blazers took control in the second with a run which was anchored by center Tori Patton and big man Rich Chavez. Patton had 13 points, while Chavez snared a very impressive 11 rebounds in the contest. Porac was very impressed with their performances tonight.

"Rich is big on the glass and brings a lot of physical dominance. We need to get [the ball] into his hands and Tori's as well. They were physically better than the WJ guys tonight.”

Blair put the game away in the fourth quarter by allowing the Wildcats to dig their own grave with turnovers. The team passed the ball very nicely, but lost control of the ball often and missed numerous open shots. The team didn't score in the first 5:30 of the fourth quarter, enough for the Blazers to put the game completely out of reach.

"Some nights you'll win no matter what you do,” Porac said, "and tonight [Walter Johnson] killed themselves with mistakes.”

After Patton's 13 points, the scoring for Blair came from JayDee Encarnacion with 10 points, and Chavez with six. Porac was hit with a technical foul in the second quarter for yelling at one of the referees about a non-call where he felt there was a foul.

One aspect of the game that made Porac happy was foul shooting, where Blair shot 9-for-14, an improvement over last Friday's 11 point win over Bethesda-Chevy Chase. "Free throws have improved, that's for sure, and that's good,” Porac said.

But, for Porac, one point he said he needs to hammer home is intensity. "We need more intensity. We missed too many layups, which shouldn't have happened with our physical dominance.”

The sluggish, low scoring game was not one for the highlight reels, but, to Porac, at the end of the day, a win is still a win in the standings. "We won, and that's always good, no matter what issues there were otherwise.”