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Boys basketball: Merrillville notches first DAC victory
CHESTERTON — Merrillville players got the lecture from TJ Lux at halftime.
It was a turnover fest for the Pirates in the first 16 minutes after they fumbled the ball away 13 times. The errors were driving Lux crazy.
The Pirates heard it, understood it and executed the let’s-stop-giving-the-game-away philosophy after intermission.
The end result was an explosive 24-point third quarter that propelled Merrillville to a 54-47 victory Saturday in the Duneland Conference opener for both teams.
Lux’s message was pretty simple: Playing carelessly with the basketball was unacceptable.
“I just wanted to know if they wanted to be that type of team (that turned the ball over),” Lux said.
Apparently not. The Pirates, playing belly-button to belly-button man-to-man defense, scored 13 of the first 17 points out of the gate. They went from trailing by a point to being ahead 34-26 with 4:13 left in the third quarter after Zoran Talley hit a 3-pointer that made the score 34-26.
The run was an impressive mix of tough defense, mixed offensive balance. John Mosley, Edward Seay, BJ Jenkins and Talley all scored. They finished the second half with just four turnovers. That was enough to knock the pesky Trojans out.
Chesterton coach Tom Peller watched his team get back in the game with an impressive second spurt that was keyed by its zone press. He then watched his young team struggle with the rugged half court defense Merrillville played. Chesterton finished with 18 turnovers — 10 of them in the second half.
“It was subtle things,” Peller said. “They made plays and we didn’t.”
In the first half, Chesterton forced four straight turnovers after Peller called a timeout with around five minutes left and put his team into a full-court zone trap.
The Trojans were able to wipe out a seven-point deficit before the end of the half with the defensive pressure. A 3-point play by Cole Teal with 8.5 seconds left ended a 9-1 run for Chesterton and it gave them a 22-21 lead at halftime. Chesterton was slightly better in the turnover department in the first 16 minutes, finishing with eight.
Merrillville built a seven-point first quarter lead with the help of sharp shooting by BJ Jenkins, who hit a pair of 3-pointers early — the second one with 5:55 left in the first — that gave the Pirates a 9-2 advantage.
After the Pirates opened up a lead in the third quarter, they went into delay mode, forcing the Trojans to chase them. Chesterton cut the lead to four and had a chance to cut it even more but they couldn’t convert offensively.
Jenkins led Merrillville with 15 points while Edward Seay, who left briefly in the first half after getting fouled hard by Matt Holba, finished with 12 points.
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