By Wendi Reardon Price
Sports Writer
INDEPENDENCE TWP. — In the rivalry between Clarkston and Lake Orion, the Wolves Boys Varsity Basketball team came out on top last Friday with a 52-40 victory.
“I really liked our energy tonight,” said Tim Wasilk, head coach for Clarkston. “Defensively, we were really good from the get-go especially in the first half. A lot of energy, deflections, steals, blocks, 50/50 balls, getting on the floor – It was good Clarkston defense and we have been stressing that.”
“We learned a lesson today,” shared Jose Andrades, head coach for the Dragons. “Clarkston came out hard and played strong. They played varsity speed. We are young – we have two returning starters. They are young, too. This is the first time we have played at the varsity speed. The games we played, we didn’t play that hard. This is one of the games where it was a big lesson to us. It showed us how hard we have to play, how hard we have to work, how physical we need to be.”
Both teams were quick in pace to start the game. The first basket came two minutes in the game by Clarkston’s Peyton Fitzsimonds.
Lake Orion’s Zack Parks put them on the board with one point from the free throw line before the Wolves went on a 7-point run.
Dragon Nick Galben slowed the run with his basket with two minutes to go. The Wolves responded with two 3-point shots, one from John Kaul and another from Matthew Pflieger, to close the first quarter with Clarkston leading, 15-5.
“We like fast,” said Andrades. “But, right now we aren’t good at it. We have to get better at it. We are still learning a lot – quickly.”
The Wolves closed the first half leading 30-13 with Fitzsimonds and Kaul scoring a combination of 11 points in the last four minutes. Kaul scored on a pair of 3-pointers while Fitzsimonds had one field goal and a basket to finish the quarter.
“We made some shots tonight,” said Wasilk. “We had contributions from the guys tonight. I liked our ball movement. Some things we did on the offensive end – got some three point shots, knocked some free throws down. We had seven 3s that was good to see. Lake Orion is tough. We watched them on film. They are good defensively. They have some good guards and some good bigs (players). They are athletic. We knew we just had to bring our intensity to the floor to take them out of what they wanted to do as much as we possibly could. They had a nice run the second half so we knew they were going to fight back and come after it. We just have to do a better job at taking care of the basketball and finishing the games off. Hopefully that will come with experience.”
“Clarkston beat us up and out played us. They are a good team,” said Andrades.
Fitzsimonds led the Wolves with 19 points. Kaul had 16 points and Quinn Rosenberg had seven points.
Leading scorers for Lake Orion (2-2) were juniors Zack Parks with 13 points and Gabe Scott with 11 points.
Wasilk added this past week has helped the players get ready for league play.
“It’s been great when you can play rival Lake Orion,” he said. “It always gets kids ready to play and up to play. It was good preparation as well as going down to Detroit Old Redford and playing in a super tough atmosphere. The gym was probably like our auxiliary gym with 200 people. It was the loudest gym we have been in for years. The atmosphere was electric.”
Lake Orion played Holly on Tuesday after press time. The Dragons’ next home game is 7 p.m. Thursday versus Farmington.