SMITHBURG – To Nate Naylor, the North Hagerstown basketball team is a DYI project.
“We have the pieces of the puzzle here,” said the Hubs’ new coach. “We just have to start putting it together and continue to build on it.”
With jigsaw precision and strategy, North built the outer framework of its big picture on Monday. Now the Hubs have the rest of the season to fill in the middle to finish the big picture.
North came out fast and strong against Smithsburg – scoring a 19 of the first 21 points of the game – and interlocked enough of those pieces keep the Leopards out of the picture in a 80-63 victory in the season opener for both teams.
Basically, the Hubs put everything together with an early burst that took the Leopards apart.
“Something we wanted to do was to make them play all 32 minutes,” Naylor said “We wanted to get out fast to see if they could maintain that tempo. Starting quickly was the big key for us.”
Smithsburg was down before it knew what hit them.
North jumped out to a 12-0 lead in the first four minutes with the first nine coming on driving scores. Joey Dorsey – one of the Hubs’ two prize returnees – scored a quick six and Brayden Cespedes – the other half that duo – scored on a pair of lightning quick drives after a Dorsey 3 to make it 19-2 by the time Smithsburg called time with 2:26 left in the quarter.
“They came out and kicked us in the teeth early,” said Smithsburg coach Eric Gerber. “You know that 19-2 to start is rough. We were down 17 in like four minutes into that game.
“After that, we were able to battle and get it back to 10 or so, then they hit some big shots and stretched it back out.”
Smithsburg switched up defensively, moving from a man to a zone defense in an effort to keep North from attacking the rim, but it didn’t last long.
But the Leopards did score the final eight points of the quarter – four coming from Jacob Tyler – to cut the deficit in half at 19-10 to end the first period.
“We had trouble with that pace early … we just had trouble guarding. That was the bottom line,” Gerber said. “I don’t mind playing that pace if we can guard. We had to go to a zone to slow them down … and it did. When we were trying to play them in man, we couldn’t stop them.”
Soon, the Hubs flashed their outside shooting and forced Smithsburg to extend the defense, which opened up the middle again.
The pieces continued to fall together for North’s puzzle.
“It looked like they started in man and went to like a 2-3, but it was really wide. They came out really far.,” Naylor said “They looked like they wanted to protect the paint. One of the things we tried to emphasize was we want to take a good 3, but we still wanted to keep getting to the rim and make them stop us inside.
“The thought was ‘If we could get up early, we felt it would be hard for them to get back into (the game).’ We would have to collapse for them to get back into it.”
The was no collapsing involved.
Three players scored 60 of North’s 80 points on the night. Dorsey had 30, while Cespedes added 17 before leaving the game in the fourth quarter with a leg cramp. Jaron Nickolson added 13.
The only thing North didn’t win was the battle for high scorer of the game. Tyler took that honor by leading Smithsburg with 32 points.
The team battled evenly to start the second quarter. Tyler scored Smithsburg’s first 11 points of the period, trumping the five each by Dorsey and Nicholson. That move Leopards to within 29-21 with 4:28 left in the half.
The eight-point deficit was as close at Smithburg would get for the rest of the game. North led 36-24 at the intermission.
North began opening up the floor in the second half as the Hubs slowly pulled away.
“Cespedes … that’s a quick kid,” Gerber said. “We just could not stay in front of him and he created things for Dorsey and some other players. He’s super quick and good with the ball … he hurt us.”
And that allowed Dorsey to wait for his points to find him.
“Joey is understanding that ‘when they try to take me away, he knows that Tristan (Redick) can shoot it, Brayden can score, Trenten (Ciucci) can shoot it and (Michael) Bell can score,” Naylor said. “We have more pieces. We just have to put them in position to score.”
That was evident in the second half as Dorsey only scored 10 of the Hubs’ final 44 points, while Tyler accounted for 17 for the Leopards.
Smithsburg fell behind by 20 by the midway of the third quarter, but rallied to trail 57-45 by the end of the period.
The surge left Gerber with some hope. But it was short-lived.
The fourth quarter opened with four straight three pointers … but North hit three of them.
“We had talked about if we could get it down to single digits and we’d get a shot,” he said. “They came out and hit those 3s. We had one missed assignment there and that one they shouldn’t have had. And the others they just knocked down and that was the game. We couldn’t cut it back after that.”
North opened the quarter on a 9-3 run. Bell, Redick and Nicholson hit the 3s to jumpstart the Hubs with Tyler countering with one for Smithsburg.
The Hubs led 66-48 with 6:45 remaining. The lead grew to 24 before the Leopards mounted a 13-6 run in the final 5:20 to finish off the 17-point loss.
Dorsey led North with 11 rebounds and he tied with Cespedes and Bell for team lead with four assists.
Jaxon Teson backed Tyler with 11 points while James Hare added 10 points and 10 rebounds for the Leopards.
Now, while the Hubs work of piece the team together, Smithsburg tries to build on the moral victory of the courage it displayed while under fire.
“I’m certainly happy with the way we responded after we were down,” Gerber said. “We were down 17 early and ended up being down 17 at the end of the game. We didn’t give up.”
