XENIA — Beavercreek wants to play with more consistency this season.
So far so good as the Beavers stormed out to a big lead early and beat Fairborn 83-48 at Benner Field House on Friday.
Beavercreek led 7-0 after the opening minute and extended its lead to 21 points just four minutes into the first quarter.
“We wanted to do this last year, but because of the lack of numbers we weren’t able to sustain that kind of pressure,” head coach Steve Pittman said. “And then we weren’t able to handle pressure because we didn’t get a chance to put a lot of the young kids that we had in over the summer to work on pressure because everything over the summer makes you comfortable.”
Senior Adam Duvall, one of six on this year’s team, had a game-high 24 points. Junior Kyle Putnam made four three-pointers in the first half and finished with 14 points.
Fairborn was led by 16 points from sophomore Ty Williams and 10 by junior Caelan Bush.
The two teams got an immediate feel of the new running clock rule early in the second half when Beavercreek extended its 32-point halftime lead out to the required 35-point margin for the clock to no longer stop except for timeouts and injuries. Fairborn never closed the gap under 30 to revert to normal timing rules.
“I didn’t realize it until I looked up in the third quarter when there was a foul called and I saw it running and just thought, ‘why is the clock running?’” Pittman said. “All we wanted to do was get some kids on the floor to compete, but there’s never enough minutes and especially when there’s no stoppages of the clock. We had to call timeout at the end just to sub.”
Fairborn will start MVL play on Tuesday hosting Sidney. Beavercreek hits the road Friday to begin GWOC action at Springboro.
Legacy Christian 68, Bethel 61
Legacy came away with an impressive opening win over the Bees.
Trailing by two at halftime, the Knights outscored Bethel 33-25 in the second half.
Legacy next plays host to Cedarville on Tuesday.
Northwestern 59, Xenia 55 (OT) (girls)
Xenia trailed by two at halftime, but led into the fourth quarter and was unable to hold off a late Northwestern charge.
The Indians outscored the Bucs 9-5 in overtime.
Xenia hosts West Carrollton on Wednesday.
