Boys Basketball: South Carroll Ends Regular Season With A Win, Ties Best Record in School History

South Carroll boys basketball team ended the regular season with a 70-55 blow-out of Thomas Johnson Friday night in Winfield.

It was senior night and the Cavaliers honored the cheerleaders and members of the basketball squad along with manager Austin Comfort.

The victory allowed the team to tie for the best regular season record in school history with the 1988-89 squad.

Also with an eye toward the Cavalier history book senior Ryan McTavish inched closer to being the all-time scorer. He notched 20 points in the game to now have 1,423 for his career. Bobby Briggs scored 1,437 when he wore the South Carroll colors.

Being senior night, South Carroll coach Doug Goff started his five upperclassmen. Joining McTavish for the tip off was Eric Hunsberger, Jeff Martin, Ryan MacIvor and Shane Martin.

"We can’t complain with a win, when you win by 18 or whatever we won by," said Goff. "It wasn’t our usual style of game. They played some junk defenses, they played a box-and-one and it made it sloppy, but that’s okay. We’ll take the win."

South Carroll trailed for almost five minutes into the game before they tied the score. They took the lead for good when Gavin McTavish hit a bucket at the buzzer to end the first eight minutes of play up 11-9.

When the teams broke for halftime, the home team was up 35-21.

The visitors tried to stay in the game from beyond the arc as they drained nine three-pointers in the game. But South Carroll was too much for the Patriots. Thomas Johnson is now 8-14 on the season.

"They made a lot of three’s that kept it at what it was. They are a big team, they have some big guys. It’s hard to guard them inside and contest all those three’s. You have to take something away and we figured to take away the post and not give them the real easy ones and hope they didn’t make enough to beat us. They made a lot but not enough to beat us," said Goff.

Also scoring for the Cavaliers were Hunsberger and Gavin McTavish with 15 points each, Dan Mullen chipped eight, while Jeff Martin and Ryan Tate each had six.

Kyle Carpenter led the Patriots with 18 points. He scored 15 of the points on three-pointers.

Next up for the Cavaliers is the playoffs. They don’t know their opponent, but they play on Feb. 28 at home.

Asked what the Cavaliers do getting ready for the playoffs, Goff said, "We take off tomorrow and Sunday and Monday is off school, but we will come in and stretch and walk through. We will know by that time who the draw is and know one of the two teams we will play and we will start preparing like we usually do."

South Carroll also closed out the season winning the junior varsity contest, 51-48. They were up by one point 47-46 with 42 seconds left in the game. Tyler Alcid sunk four foul shots and John Quinn one in the final 42 seconds to preserve the win.

The Cavaliers ended the season at 15-5. "It’s always good to win the last game of the year," said coach Jim Shea.

Alcid led South Carroll with 15 points, Philip Breno pumped in 12, Matthew Dee, eight; Ryan Gibson, six; Quinn, four; Stephen Walker, three and James Whittington, two.