In a game of chess, each player starts the game with two Bishops.
Guerin Catholic’s boys basketball team started the weekend playing one Bishop, and will finish the weekend playing another in Fort Wayne today. The Golden Eagles raced to an 11-0 lead and never looked back, capturing Circle City Conference rival Bishop Chatard 69-47 Friday night in Indianapolis. With a quick turnaround, the team has a 4 p.m. tipoff this afternoon against Fort Wayne Bishop Luers as their part of Basketball Day Indiana.
Jack Hansen outscored Bishop Chatard by himself in the first quarter with ten points as the Golden Eagles led 19-9 at the quarter break. A pair of 3-point field goals by Luke Godfrey in the second quarter paced the GC attack with GC leading 39-22 at halftime. Coach Pete Smith’s squad was very efficient at the offensive end in the first 16 minutes, making 16-22 field goal attempts (72.7 percent).
Kian Sills and Hansen led a balanced scoring attack with five points in the third quarter as Guerin Catholic’s lead ballooned to 51-27 midway through the stanza. Reserves finished much of the contest after that. The score could have gotten much worst if the Golden Eagles wouldn’t struggled from the free throw stripe, shooting an uncharacteristic 55.5 percent and missing all three front ends of one and one situations. The other subpar stat line was the team’s 18 turnovers against the Trojans, but Smith pointed out that seven or eight of them were offensive fouls, which he said is as many as he can ever remember a team incurring in one of his team’s games.
Friday’s game marked the ninth straight victory for Guerin Catholic (7-5, 2-1 CCC) in the series between the two schools, and the Golden Eagles’ 10th victory out of 14 contests all-time against Chatard (7-4, 1-1 CCC).
“I was pleased with the start to both halves,” said Smith. “We executed and got good looks at the basket. Defensively we contained them decently and most of the shots Chatard missed were contested shots. Overall we took advantage of our height advantage pretty well.”
Hansen was the game’s leading scorer with 17 points, all in the first three quarters of action. Teammate Zach Munson scored 16, again in just the first three periods. Sills was the game’s leading rebounder with five while adding 10 points. GC held a commanding 32-15 rebounding advantage. Smith also praised Godfrey for “talking well defensively,” and the junior also dished out a career-high eight assists.
The Golden Eagles have won five of their last seven contests as they head north today to capture its second Bishop in less than 24 hours.
