Hazelwood East coach Lawndale Thomas, a starting guard on Lima Senior’s 1992 boys basketball state runner-up team, warned his team a storm awaited them before they took on the Spartans in the Kewpee Tip-Off Classic on Friday night.
And that storm arrived early when Lima Senior forced 11 turnovers in the first quarter and jumped out to a 30-6 lead on its way to a 77-62 win.
As basketball storms go, it was a probably a Category 4 with severe damage that couldn’t be repaired quickly. After it was tied 2-2 in the opening minute, Lima Senior went on a 20-0 run in a four-minute span in the first quarter to take control of the game.
Hazelwood, from Missouri, played the Spartans almost even for the middle two quarters and outscored LIma Senior’s bench players by 10 in the fourth quarter. But it was too little, too late.
Marquavious Wilson’s 19 points led four Lima Senior players who scored in double figures. Xavier Simpson scored 18 points, Jaylin Thomas got 14 points and Ruben Flowers scored 13 for the Spartans (3-0).
Cory Shepherd’s 13 points led Hazelwood East (1-2).
“I told my guys all week they are going to come at you. They’re going to punch you in the face. Are you going to be ready? You’re going to have to be ready,” Thomas said.
Lima Senior’s early pressure was just business as usual. There was no scouting report that said Hazelwood was particularly vulnerable in a fullcourt game.
“I didn’t know anything about this team. I just knew they had two kids who were pretty good. I knew they were kind of fast and scrappy but we were kind of blindfolded going in,” Lima Senior coach Quincey Simpson said.
“It was a great start but I didn’t like how we played the last three quarters as a group,” he said. “I didn’t think our guys collectively came to play when their name was called. We were just a little flat in the second and third quarters.”
Thomas liked the way his team stayed in the game even after falling behind by 24 points after eight minutes.
“We competed. We were down almost 30 and got back. We could have just folded and lost by 50 or 60,” he said.
Lima Senior shot 53 percent on field goals (29 of 55), led by Wilson, who was 7 of 10, including 2 of 4 on 3-pointers, and Thomas, who was 5 of 8, with a pair of 3-pointers.
Hazelwood, located in the suburbs of St. Louis, shot 43 percent (25 of 58) and finished with 24 turnovers.
Thomas, who said he gets back to Lima once or twice a year, sees potential similar to what the 1991-92 Spartans had in this season’s Lima Senior team.
“They’ve got a chance to surpass our team in ‘92 if they keep competing,” he said. “They’ve got the pieces. They’ve got a chance. We had more scorers than they do. They’re more athletic than we were. They have to get somebody who is a defensive stopper.”
In Friday night’s first game, Lakewood St. Edward beat Dayton Dunbar 88-81. Tom Schmock led St. Edward with 28 points and Devon Baker had 28 for Dunbar.
Tonight, Hazelwood East will play Columbus Marion Franklin at 6 p.m. in the Kewpee tournament and Lima Senior and Dunbar will tip off around 7:30 p.m.
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