CONCORD -- A career night from Derek Sanders helped Columbia Central down Concord 63-59 on Monday in the season opener for both boys basketball squads.
Sanders, a 6′4 sophomore, had nine points in the second quarter as the Golden Eagles wiped out an early deficit, and then poured in 14 in the fourth quarter as Columbia Central built up a lead that the Yellowjackets could not overcome.
He finished with a career-high 30.
“I feel like it flowed pretty good towards the end, but we kind of started off slow,” he said. “We kind of kicked it into gear and got things going.”
His 14 fourth-quarter points came from every way imaginable. He opened the quarter with a 3-pointer off an assist from Jordan Pewsey, added a jumper and a layup moments later, then added another 3-pointer off an assist from Chase Strasser before scoring off a putback.
“Exactly what you’d expect of a player that works as hard as he does,” Columbia Central coach Troy Stewart said. “Most coachable kid I’ve ever had in the program. Sometimes it’s unfair because he’s a sophomore and we expect that kind of stuff from him, but the team feeds off him a little bit. As a sophomore he’s still a leader on the team.”
That helped Columbia Central build a 16-point lead, up 57-41 with just under three minutes to play.
But Concord wasn’t through. Anthony Evans converted a three-point play with 2:36 to go in the game, then added two more free throws on Concord’s next trip down the floor. Evans fed. Jordan Medellin for a 3-pointer and hit a jumper of his own to make it a 59-51 game.
After Concord got the lead back up to 63-51 thanks to Sanders free throws and a layup by Andrew Hosmer, Isaac Waldron hit a layup for the Yellowjackets and Evans and Mehki Wingfield had three-point plays on back-to-back possessions.
“I’m proud of them for fighting,” Concord coach Marcus Gill said. “That’s going to be a slow start for us. We’ve got a new team. Everybody thought that we were good last year, but we lost five of our top eight. We’ve got a bunch of young guys, we’re playing two freshmen, so we made a lot of mistakes. Give Columbia Central a lot of credit. They out-toughed us, especially on the offensive glass, and [Sanders] just kicked our tail all night.”
But that last three-point play came with just 10.5 seconds left, and despite getting a turnover, Concord couldn’t get any closer.
“They chipped away because we kind of let them get in our heads,” Sanders said. “But then we came back and called timeout and reset things and handled the pressure better.”
Strasser added nine points, including one of the highlights of the night for Columbia Central. Nursing a one-point lead with two seconds left in the third and Concord inbounding the ball, Strasser stepped in front of the pass, took one step, and let fly a 3-pointer to beat the buzzer, giving the Golden Eagles a 41-37 lead heading into the final quarter.
“It’s always been about Chase wanting it, and tonight he wanted it,” Stewart said. “He’s made huge strides over this preseason. I’ve rooted for him, wanted him to do exactly what he did tonight.”
Hosmer added eight points off the bench for the Golden Eagles.
Evans led Concord with 22, including hitting his own buzzer-beating shot from three-quarters court to end the first quarter. Wingfield chipped in 14. Jett Smith had eight.
Smith and Conner Stevens, both freshmen, made their varsity debuts for Concord. Stevens opened the scoring with a 3-pointer.
“They’re good. They’re talented,” Gill said. “Which is why they’re on varsity, which is why they’re playing. They just don’t have a clue how hard you have to play and to do all the little things you have to do to win. We have to be better and coaching the guys up and getting them to where they need to be.”
Concord’s shooting came and went throughout the game. The Yellowjackets hit four of their first five from the floor, then went into halftime shooting 9-for-27. In the third quarter they were 6-for-12, only to miss their first eight shots of the fourth before hitting six in a row during their comeback bid.
“We had to do a lot better job of getting paint touches,” Gill said. “Columbia Central did a great job of getting up and denying the wings, and we didn’t start driving it until the fourth quarter. This late in games last year we looked to Graeley Sprague a lot because he was a big-time shot maker. We don’t have that this year. We’ve got to get into the lane and trust each other.”
Concord jumped out to the early lead on the strength of sharing the ball and hitting 3-pointers. Stevens in hit a 3-pointer off an assist from Waldron, and Waldron later fed Evans for another 3-pointer and Wingfield fed Smith for another long-range shot. That made it 11-3 Concord.
“Heart and effort. It starts on the defensive side and that’s what we did,” Stewart said. “We challenged passing lanes. We got some easy baskets. That got us going a little bit. The defense is what got us going.”
That was when the Golden Eagles began to find Sanders. A basket on a post move and another on a putback got the Golden Eagles within two in the waning seconds of the first quarter, down 13-11 before Evans responded with his buzzer-beater.
In the second quarter, the Golden Eagles kept getting it to Sanders. He rebounded a missed free throw and put it back in, then moments later hit a jumper and on the next possession a 3-pointer, knotting the score at 18-18 with 5:23 left in the half, giving him seven points in the span of four trips down the floor.
Strasser then fed Braiden Berro on a floater down the lane to put Columbia Central ahead for the first time in the game.
The lead then traded hands a few times the rest of the half. Waldron fed Wingfield to put Concord back in front 21-20, then Strasser hit Hosmer cutting down the lane to make it 22-21 Golden Eagles. Waldron fed Smith for a 3-pointer to make it 24-22 Yellowjackets before Gavin Zuver hit Sanders for a layup to tie things up 24-24 at the half.
Brendan Neitzke feeding Zuver for a 3-pointer keyed an early third-quarter run to put the Golden Eagles up 30-26 before Concord responded with baskets in the lane by Evans and Wingfield. The 32-32 tie was followed by a 34-34 tie and a 36-36 tie before Columbia Central pulled ahead on free throws by Strasser.
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