By CHRIS STONER
FLOYDS KNOBS — The old cliché “speed kills” was in full effect Saturday night in Floyds Knobs as visiting Evansville Harrison raced past Floyd Central 81-54 in the season opener for both teams.
“Their pressure makes you hurry everything. They made us play a lot faster than we wanted to play,” Floyd head coach Randy Gianfagna said.
The Highlanders finished with 24 turnovers.
“We can’t simulate their ball pressure in practice,” Gianfagna said. “When they get ahead, (Kendal) Brown is just going to take you off the bounce and make everyone else better. We couldn’t control the bounce against those guys.”
Brown, a 5-foot-9 senior guard, led the Warriors with 19 points and dropped in three 3-pointers on the night.
Harrison started fast as Brown’s second triple of the game gave the visitors an 11-2 lead with 3:38 to go in the first frame.
“Our guys got down a little early because he (Brown) pulls up from 24 feet a couple of times and hits it,” Gianfagna said. “Early I thought we got some good looks and they just didn’t go down and they seemed to hit everything.”
Harrison led 17-8 at the first stop behind its high pressure defense. The Warriors pulled out to a 27-12 lead with 4:06 to go in the first half, forcing a Floyd timeout. The hosts committed 12 first-half turnovers and found themselves in an 18-point hole at intermission.
“We did not want to get to a point where we had to chase them and that’s what happened. After one quarter, we’re out chasing and that’s not going to be our strength against a team like that,” Gianfagna said.
The Highlanders had six more turnovers in the third period as Harrison extended its lead to 28 points heading to the fourth, putting the game out of reach.
“They put a lot of pressure on us. We didn’t handle the hand-checking very well,” said Gianfagna. “We did not get the ball where it needed to go on offense. We were trying to feed our post guys when they had three guys on them.”
The Highlanders shot 46 percent from the field, including 52 percent in the second half. Floyd’s Ryan Adam led all scorers with 21, while Buddy McAfee put in 11 for the home team.
“I would have to watch the tape to see how many bad shots we took, but we didn’t just throw any up at the rim. We for the most part took good shots,” Gianfagna said.
Floyd was narrowly outrebounded 36-31, but only hit 7-of-14 free-throw attempts.
“We gave up too many offensive rebounds that turned into layups for them,” Gianfagna said. “We wanted to take it inside and go to the line 30 times and that obviously didn’t happen.”
Next up for Floyd is Silver Creek at home this coming Saturday.
“I just told the guys to come back Monday with maximum effort, and we’ll keep working hard to get better,” Gianfagna said.
EV. HARRISON 17 22 24 18—81
FLOYD CENTRAL 8 13 14 19—54
Evansville Harrison (1-0) — Boberg 6, Duckworth 9, Brown 19, Cope 16, Lee 2, Hayes 8, Redd 4, Rogers 2, Woolfolk 15.
Floyd Central (0-1) — Adam 21, Mitchell 3, Codey 4, Banet 3, McAfee 11, Allen 7, Naville 0, Crone 0, Thompson 5, Niehoff 0.
Three-point field goals — Harrison 6 (Brown 3, Cope 3); Floyd Central 3 (Mitchell, Adam, Banet).
Rebounds — Harrison 36, Floyd Central 31.
Turnovers — Harrison 10, Floyd Central 24.
JUNIOR VARSITY: Harrison 40 (7-12-9-12) — Thomas 12, Patton 4, Cannon 8, Chamberlain 6, Samuels 2, DeMoss 2, Chestnut 6; Floyd Central 31 (11-6-1-13) — Veroff 2, Jeffries 5, Neihoff 2, Peters 2, Crone 8, Naville 0, Knight 10, Mitchell 2.
