Traverse City Record-Eagle

Sports

February 1, 2012

Petoskey stays atop Big North standings

Northmen pull away for 53-27 win at TC Central

BY DENNIS CHASE dchase@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — Petoskey coach Dennis Starkey was worried about a letdown.

It never materialized.

The unbeaten Northmen, coming off an emotional last-second road win at Cadillac last Friday, put together a workmanlike effort Tuesday night to beat Traverse City Central 53-27 in a Big North Conference basketball game.

"I think that it would have been natural for that (letdown) to happen, whether at the high school level or higher," Starkey said. "But that wasn't the case tonight."

After trailing 8-2 midway through the first quarter, the Northmen gradually pulled away, leading by six at half and by 15 after three quarters.

Zac Lewis led Petoskey (14-0, 9-0) with 14 points. Jake Mullin added 13 and Sam Baumgartner 10.

"It's scary coming in and playing a team like (Central) that plays hard all the time," Lewis said. "We had to match their intensity and play within ourselves."

The Northmen held Central to 11 second-half points.

"Give Central credit," Starkey said. "They played as hard as anybody we've played.

"But we did exactly what we needed to do to get a win here. We played hard ourselves and took advantage of some things offensively."

Mullin helped the Northmen pull away in the second half, scoring eight of his 13 points. He was particularly effective beyond the 3-point arc.

"He's a good shooter — a 40 percent 3-point shooter," Starkey said.

Ryan Verschuren was the lone Trojan (4-9, 2-6) in double figures. He finished with 12 points, 10 in the first half.

Central coach Jeff Turner came away impressed with Petoskey, ranked No. 6 in Class A.

"They don't hurt themselves too often,' he said. "You have to truly beat them. That's a compliment to coach Starkey and his program. They're disciplined offensively. They're disciplined defensively. They rebound well. They shoot free throws well. They shoot the three well. They're a pretty good team. There's a reason they've got that nice winning streak and have won the Big North a couple years in a row. They've got kids who are buying into what they're doing."

Turner said the Trojans need to put the loss behind them and re-focus.

"Someway we've got to bottle up the intensity and the way we played in first few minutes when we got off to that 8-2 lead and carry that through the rest of the season," he said. "We told the kids the only thing we can do is go back to work (today). We've got to shake this off. We have Gaylord on Friday. We've got to look ahead. We still have a lot of basketball to play."

Central won the JV game 60-33 as Adam Stepan scored 14 points and Max Knoblock 10. The Trojan freshmen (9-3) won 45-37 as Bronson Wood scored 11 points and Cole Walker 10. Petoskey's freshmen were led by Nick Mesnard's 18 points.

The Northmen return to Big North action next Friday, when they return to Traverse City to play West. Petoskey leads the Titans by two games in the league race.

"Our goal from the beginning of the season was to win the BNC outright," Lewis said. "That will be a big win if we can get that one."

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