FAIRMONT — There was no shortage of defense inside Fairmont High School’s sweltering gym on Friday night that only added to the heat of the matchup on the court as St. Pauls visited its in-county rival.
Fairmont met its defensive match in the game, however, as the Bulldogs locked in during the second half to claim a 52-43 Three Rivers Conference game. The win avenges a 77-70 loss to Fairmont at St. Pauls back in December.
“We’re some dogs. We got some dogs on this team,” St. Pauls senior Caleb Henderson said of his team’s defense. “We just get at it in practice. We go at each other hard and that’s why I believe we play defense so good.”
St. Pauls’ (14-4, 8-2 TRC) defense held Fairmont (9-9, 7-4 TRC) in check after halftime, holding the Golden Tornadoes to 20 points in the third and fourth quarters, while the Golden Tornadoes hurt themselves at the free-throw line after halftime by going 1-for-10. For the game, Fairmont was 3-for-15.
“They came out and stuck to the gameplan. They crashed the offensive board and got six points during the (third-quarter) stretch off offensive rebounds,” Fairmont coach Montrell McNair said. “We didn’t do a good job of boxing out and at the same time we missed free throws. That’s a recipe for a loss.”
While defense was a guiding force for the Bulldogs, crashing the boards was a point of emphasis coming into the contest.
“We knew they were a great offensive rebounding team so I challenged my guys to rebound the ball and limit them to one shot,” St. Pauls coach Corey Thompson said. “I know they might have had a bad shooting night, but we was prepared to come out and take some things from them.”
With the Bulldogs locking in after halftime, senior scoring fueled the St. Pauls offense, behind all of Henderson’s game-high 12 points coming in the second half.
“They kept telling me to play my game. I couldn’t even throw it in the ocean,” Henderson said. “At halftime I told myself to believe in myself because I knew what I could do. And I did what I do, get it to the hole.”
Henderson scored 10 in the third period as the Bulldogs took control. After leading 25-23 at the break, the St. Pauls lead was trimmed to 34-32 with 2:43 left in the quarter. The senior guard scored four straight points and the lead grew to 10 points in a little more than two minutes of game action.
Fairmont scored nine points in the fourth and never drew closer than seven points to the Bulldogs. Sharron Wilson scored back-to-back buckets for the Golden Tornadoes in the fourth, but they came at both ends of a nearly 4 1/2-minute dry spell that helped St. Pauls take a 13-point lead with less than two minutes left.
“We made some adjustments in our fullcourt press and continued to challenge the guys on rebounding (in the second half),” Thompson said. “That’s one thing we’ve been doing since Day One when I got here is pressing and more so than just pressing is pressure. That’s what we do every day and that’s one of our foundations.”
Emonta Smith had 11 points for St. Pauls and Anthony Campbell had eight points.
For Fairmont, Colby Thorndyke made the most of his first conference appearance on varsity with a team-high 11 points and Tyrese Bradley had 10 points.
“Tyrese was having a great game until he caught those cramps. I hated to see him go down because that’s when we started faltering a little bit,” McNair said. “Colby came in an gave us a big lift when we needed it. He made some big plays and stepped up on defense for a couple charges. He said he was ready before the game. I believe him now.”
Fairmont plays at Whiteville and South Columbus visits St. Pauls on Tuesday.
St. Pauls girls stay perfect, down Fairmont
With the Fairmont girls basketball team taking the air out of the ball and meticulously looking to slow down the pace to find prime chances to score against St. Pauls’ stout defense, the Bulldogs made the most of the opportunity not getting out and running to focus on its defense.
“We got to work on our packline defense and we didn’t chase them because we were already ahead,” St. Pauls coach Mike Moses said after his team’s 59-29 win over Fairmont on Friday.
“They did that to us toward the end last time we played to slow it up and hope we fall asleep to try and bang a 3 or get an easy lane. We stayed patient as long as they weren’t driving.”
St. Pauls (17-0, 10-0 TRC) took control early with an 11-0 run out the gate and led 20-5 over Fairmont (6-12, 5-6 TRC) after one quarter. The lead blossomed to 36-9 by halftime and 49-14 after three quarters, but the Golden Tornadoes refused to go down quietly, and avoided a running-clock margin against the Three Rivers Conference leaders.
“We were really disappointed with how we played in the second half of the South View game. We were up 24 points and got a little lazy,” Moses said. “We really harped on playing four quarters of basketball this game and not really switching up too much.”
Guards T.J. Eichelberger and Jakieya Thompson each scored 15 points to lead St. Pauls in the win. Thompson added 11 steals and Eichelberger had 11 rebounds. In the paint for the Bulldogs, Iyania Evans had 11 points and 13 rebounds.
Fairmont was led in scoring by Paris Bethea with nine points.
