Sometimes one little subtle change is all it takes to make a big difference in an athletic contest, and such was the case Friday night at East Hamilton.
After seeing the early going played tightly in his boys' high school basketball game against Tyner, East Hamilton coach Rodney English switched the Hurricanes to a zone defense from the man-to-man in which they opened the game. With a series of steals, deflections, fastbreaks and layups, they pulled away and defeated the Rams 62-49.
The score was 12-12 early in the second quarter before the first real dividend of the defensive switch showed in the form of an 8-0 run. All three East Hamilton field goals in the spurt were layups - the last by Christian Paisley off an interception.
"We saw them struggle with their zone offense, so we wanted to try to exploit that," English said of staying with the zone after making the switch. "Our defense allowed us to get a lot of runout layups. We still let them get too many easy baskets in the lane."
Tyner (9-6) was within 24-18 after Solomon Bridgeman made the second of two free throws with 3:30 to go in the second quarter. But East Hamilton (18-3) scored the last five points of the half, with the Rams missing all of their front ends of bonus free-throw situations in the remaining time of the half.
And although the outcome may have been decided by the time the last couple of minutes played out, two of the three technical fouls called on Hurricanes players in the nondistrict but neighborhood rivalry game occurred in the final 1:34. With two free throws being wiped out by the shooter crossing the free-throw line, the Rams ended up 1-of-6 from the line in a situation spanning seven seconds.
"That's been our Achilles' heel all year - rebounding and free throws," Tyner coach E'Jay Ward said. "Going into the half we missed three one-and-ones. That's six possible free throws we could've put in the hole. We'll go back to the drawing board. The snow days didn't help much. A high school teams needs practice time. We need all the help we can get.
"We're still learning how to play basketball."
Perhaps the biggest reason the outcome was not in doubt late was because East Hamilton continued to look to score, rather than worry about working on the clock.
"I thought we needed to keep doing what we were doing because we needed to get the rust off," English said. "We couldn't let up."
After Justin Dozier's 16 points, Cameron Montgomery with 13 points was next for the 'Canes, and Bridgeman's 12 topped the Rams, although neither Montgomery nor Bridgeman scored in the first quarter. Sam Randolph totaled 11 in the first three quarters for East Hamilton, and Amon Grace had eight of his 10 for Tyner in the fourth quarter.
Tyner played without point guard Jeremy Elston. Ward made the game-time decision to sit him, noting Elston was hampered by an ankle injury.
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him on Twitter @KelleySmiddie.