Feb 2, 2018 4 min read

CANONSBURG – When you’re hot, things tend to go your way when you don’t play your best.

That was the case Friday night for the Canon-McMillan boys basketball team as the Big Macs survived a lackluster start offensively but rebounded in the second half to outscore Connellsville 29-13 and defeating the visiting Falcons 51-36 in a Class 6A, Section 2 contest.

The win keeps Canon-Mac (9-1, 17-1) in first place in the section and extends its winning streak to 13 games.

Connellsville (2-9, 9-11) had been blown out by Mt. Lebanon by 55 points Tuesday but competed hard for most of this game.

“Once we beat Mt. Lebanon, the bullseye went off their back and onto ours,” Canon-Mac head coach Rick Bell said. “We have to understand that we are going to get everyone’s best the rest of the season. Give Connellsville credit. They weren’t up for Mt. Lebanon, but they were ready for us tonight. They battled.”

“We are the No. 1-ranked ranked team right now. Everyone is going to give us their best and we have to do a better job of understanding that.”

Canon-McMillan defeated the Falcons 65-34 Jan. 9 but found itself down one at the half, 23-22.

A lot of that was because of turning the ball over and missing shots as the Big Macs made just 7 of 21 attempts in the first half, including only 2 of 10 from three-point range.

“It became a tempo thing,” Bell said. “They were trying to hold the ball and slow us down. We had to do what we could to speed things up.”

They did exactly that in the third quarter as the Big Macs shot 64 percent from the floor, making five of seven three-point shots, to take a 41-33 lead and pick up the pace of the game.

Drew Engel gave the Big Macs a 25-23 lead with the first of two three-pointers in the quarter. Scoring became contagious for the Big Macs as Elliot Waller, Ethan Beachy and Tommy Samosky each hit three-point shots as Canon-McMillan pulled away.

“That’s the biggest thing about this team is that we have six guys who can lead the team in scoring on any night,” said Bell. “Last year, we had three, so if you took our top two options away, we didn’t have much. This year, if you try and take two scorers out of the game we have four other guys who can pick up the slack. We feel that between our six guys, someone is going to get hot each night.”

Canon-McMillan’s defense kept them in the game despite the slow start offensively as they held the Falcons to just 28.8 percent shooting. Connellsville was only 6 of 22 from three-point range. They also forced the Falcons into 18 turnovers.

Defense has been a staple of the Big Macs all season as they have allowed just 48.6 points per game coming into Friday night.

“We always preach defense first,” Bell said. “We are ranked No. 1 in 6A in points allowed. We are seventh offensively. So even though we are a pretty good offensive team, we are a really good defensive team. We can play a lot of different defenses and I think that’s one of the things that makes this group special.”

The Big Macs misfired on seven consecutive shot, covering late in the first quarter and extending to early in the second but trailed only 8-7 after one quarter.

A Jason Fowlkes jumper and Samosky three-pointer gave the Big Macs a 12-11 lead early in the second.

Fowlkes kept the Big Macs in the game early, scoring 10 of his game-high 18 points in the second quarter.

A Fowlkes jumper capped a 10-3 run and gave the C-M its biggest lead of the first half at 22-17, but the Falcons scored the last six points of the half to take a 23-22 lead into the locker room.

The Big Macs opened the third quarter with a 13-5 run to take control of the game.

The Falcons were led in scoring by Jacob Ansell and Joshua Maher with 11 points each.

“We played hard,” Connnellsville head coach Andy Hedrick said. “The big thing though is they have so many guys who can put the ball in the hole. They got hot to start the third quarter and we didn’t hit anything in the second half. When you play with the guys we have against the guys they have you have to be perfect and we weren’t.”