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Hot-shooting Canon-Mac wins Trinity tournament

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Both the Canon-McMillan and Trinity boys basketball teams earned hard-fought victories that came down to the very end on Thursday night to advance to the championship of the Trinity Holiday Basketball Classic.

Things came a bit easier for the Big Macs Friday night at Hiller Hall as they walked away tournament champions after a convincing 73-35 victory.

The win was Canon-McMillan’s second over Trinity on the young season. The Big Macs defeated the Hillers 62-48 to open the season in Canonsburg.

The Big Macs (6-3) shot the ball well all night long as they made 50 percent of their attempts from the field through 3 1/2 quarters – when Big Macs head coach Rick Bell emptied the bench.

“It’s the type of shots we get,” Bell said. “A lot of people think we are a three-point shooting team, but we are a penetrating team. We are unselfish and we are able to get the ball in the paint and find open shooters. We did that well and got a lot of open looks that we were able to knock down.”

After the Hillers (3-5) took a quick 4-0 lead, C-M went on a 12-0 spurt. Tommy Samosky scored nine of his 11 first-quarter points during the run. Samosky led all scorers with 19 points.

Canon-Mac missed its first six shots of the game before making the next five, on its way to shooting 47 percent in the first half.

Samosky knocked down a late three-point shot to give the Big Macs a 15-11 lead after one quarter.

The Big Macs stayed hot in the second quarter and closed the first half on a 12-2 run to take a 38-22 lead.

All seven Canon-Mac regulars scored in the first half.

“That’s when we are at our best,” Bell said. “They don’t care who scores on any given night. They find the open guy and we trust everyone on the floor to take good shots.”

The Big Macs blew the game open to start the second half.

Drew Engel scored eight quick points as the Big Macs started the third quarter with a 15-2 run. Engel finished with 15 points on the night, 12 in the second half.

The Hillers missed their first seven shots of the quarter as the game got out of hand quickly. Trinity shot just 30 percent.

“I wasn’t thrilled with our effort last night and I certainly wasn’t happy with it tonight,” said Trinity head coach Tim Tessmer. “It’s partly a lack of confidence, but the bottom line is we didn’t play hard enough.”

A lot of the Hillers’ problems were the result of an inability to get the ball to Michael Koroly.

Koroly torched Albert Gallatin for 30 points Thursday but Canon-Mac came out with a triangle-and-two defense with Engel drawing the assignment on Koroly.

The senior Engel made it tough for Koroly to get any touches, much less shot attempts. Koroly finished with only seven points, all in the first half.

“When I told Drew he was guarding Koroly tonight he got a big smile on his face,” Bell said. “Every single kid just wants to do whatever they have to do for us to succeed, and from a coaches perspective that’s awesome.”

The Big Macs poured it on, scoring the first 14 points of the fourth quarter to extend the lead to 70-35.

In addition to the big scoring night’s from Samosky and Engel, Elliott Waller also finished in double figures with 10 points.

Dylan King led Trinity with 12.

“We aren’t young, we are inexperienced,” Tessmer said. “It shows in situations like tonight. That’s a good basketball team we played tonight, and they showed us the right way to play.”

In the consolation game, Franklin Regional took control of the game in the second half and defeated Albert Gallatin, 67-52.

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