GREENVILLE – Greenville increased its winning streak to five games on Saturday night by defeating Tecumseh 74-52.
Greenville led throughout the game as the Wave got strong contributions from throughout their lineup with 10 players scoring.
“The starters set the tone early,” Greenville boys basketball coach Kyle Joseph said. “We were able to really play a bunch of guys, and everybody who came in contributed, which they do on a nightly basis anyways, but we got a chance to get them all in the scoring book, too.”
With early baskets by Aaron Rich and Isaiah Gable, Greenville took a 5-0 lead that it never relinquished. The duo led the first quarter charge along with Peter Pandey and Marcus Wood to put the Wave up 13-6 after the first eight minutes.
Kyle Phillips, Devin Hendrix and Trae Wood joined in with points in the second quarter as Greenville increased its lead to 36-19.
Gable, who had 16 of his game-high 23 points in the first half, made four first half 3-pointers to help open up the offense for Greenville. When Gable can hit 3-pointers it forces teams out of their zone defenses, Joseph said, and into more favorable man-to-man situations.
“The last, I don’t know, eight or nine games he’s really starting to shoot it well from 3, and that makes a big difference,” the Green Wave coach said.
Greenville’s starters continued to lead the way in the third quarter, which ended with the Green Wave on top 61-34.
In the fourth the bench players did most of the scoring for Greenville with Will Coomer, Daniel Harper and Noah Walker all scoring their first points of the night as Greenville completed the 22-point victory.
Gable led Greenville with his 23 points. Also for the Wave, Rich scored 17 points, Hendrix scored 7, Pandey scored 7, Marcus Wood scored 5, Phillips scored 4, Trae Wood scored 4, Coomer scored 3, Harper scored 3, and Walker scored 1.
Clay Mastin led Tecumseh with 23 points. Also for the Arrows, Ross Warren scored 12 points, Reid Hale scored 7, Devin Alltop scored 2, David Berner scored 2, Brett Bogie scored 2, Drew Sarihan scored 2, and Will Sowder scored 2.
Greenville improved to 13-6 with Saturday’s win while Tecumseh fell to 5-16. Greenville will close out the regular season next week with three home games against Piqua, Sidney and Versailles.
“We have three more great opportunities for our seniors to play at home,” Joseph said. “So I don’t think there’s much motivation needed there. We’ve talked all year about wanting to continue to build and get ready to try to make a tournament run. These last three games and these practices on Monday and Wednesday and Thursday are big for getting us ready for whoever we play come tournament time.”
Joseph said the Wave aren’t quite peaking yet, but they’re moving in the right direction as tournament time approaches.
“We’re not there yet,” he said. “We know what some of our deficiencies are. We’re trying to get a little better at those and some of the things that we’ve done an OK at job, trying to really turn those into real strengths.”
