GREENVILLE – Greenville ended its three-game losing streak Saturday night with a dominating 70-41 victory against Milton-Union.
Greenville entered Saturday’s game on its first three-game losing streak since December 2013 having lost to Columbus Northland, Trotwood-Madison and Sidney in the past week. With their recent results, which included a really tough last-second loss to Sidney on Friday, it was important for the Green Wave to come out strong against the Bulldogs, Greenville boys basketball coach Mike Bashore said.
“It was big for us to play well early,” he said. “When you lose three in a row and the way we lost last night the last thing we wanted to do was struggle coming out. We jumped on them 9-0 early; that was huge for our kids, allowed them to relax a little bit and not play so tense, and I think it showed.”
Greenville led throughout Saturday’s game with Clay Guillozet draining a 3-pointer to get things started. Devin Hendrix, Isaiah Gable and Guillozet then added two points each to make it 9-0.
Milton-Union broke its scoring drought more than four minutes into the game with a 3-pointer by Tommy Smith, but Greenville was firmly in control and led 15-6 through one quarter of play.
Greenville’s defense continued to shut down Milton-Union in the second quarter, limiting the Bulldogs to just seven points in the period.
“We tried some different pressure tonight that we haven’t played in the past,” Bashore said. “A little 1-3-1 half-court trap worked really well for us tonight. It’s something we just put in earlier this week.
“We got a lot of steals off our defensive pressure, which bodes well for us down the stretch.”
Greenville’s offense added 18 points in the second quarter to go into halftime up by 20 points, 33-13.
“For not shooting the ball very well in the first half we were still up 20,” Bashore said. “We ran our offense, got a lot of nice easy layups in the second half, which is something we haven’t been doing a lot of.”
Greenville scored 23 points in the third quarter to extend its lead to 30 points, 56-26.
“We didn’t really let off the gas, which is something when you get up like that you have a tendency to do,” Bashore said.
Milton-Union outscored Greenville 15-14 in the fourth quarter to make the final score 70-41. The Bulldogs found offensive success in the second half by going inside to Eric Swartz, who scored 15 of his team-leading 17 points in the third and fourth quarters.
“We had a hard time guarding their big inside,” Bashore said. “That’s another thing we’ve got to get better at. But other than that I thought defensively we played pretty well. We rebounded well for the most part.”
Swartz led Milton-Union with his 17 points. Also for the Bulldogs, Blake Ullery scored nine points, Ethan Dohner scored six, Smith scored six, and Daniel Albaugh scored three.
Gable led Greenville with a game-high 24 points in the game. Also for the Green Wave, Guillozet scored 23 points, Aaron Rich scored nine, Braden Russell scored seven, Yuta Nakamura scored two, Peter Pandey scored two, Hendrix scored two, and Codi Byrd scored one.
“Clay has six assists to go along with all those points tonight, 11 rebounds, so he played a nice solid game,” Bashore said. “And Isaiah really lit it up a little bit in the third quarter there.”
Greenville improved to 8-6 with the victory while Milton-Union fell to 1-12. The Green Wave will return to action on Tuesday when they play host to 9-3 Fort Recovery.
“All in all it’s a good win after a tough three-game stretch for us,” Bashore said. “But we’ve got to come back Tuesday night against a really good Fort Recovery team and be ready to battle.”
