A strong first half guides Falcons to win over Myrtle Beach

Davion Bowens attempts a free throw against the Seahawks. Bowens dominated the paint with 16 points. PHOTO BY DRAKE HORTON

Tre’Quan Scott goes around the Myrtle Beach defender on his way to the basket. He was one of four Falcons in double figures. PHOTO BY DRAKE HORTON

Qua’liek Lewis goes up for the shot. He led the team in scoring. PHOTO BY DRAKE HORTON.

Deuce Hudson gets ready to finger roll the ball in the basket. He finished with 11 points on the night. PHOTO BY DRAKE HORTON

By Drake Horton

Contributing Writer

The Darlington Falcons picked up its first region win of the season Friday at home, defeating the Myrtle Beach Seahawks 87-79. Darlington entered the game 0-1 in the region after losing a close one to Myrtle Beach that previous Tuesday, but behind a strong first half, 32 points from Qua’liek Lewis and three other in double-digits, the Falcons were able to secure the win and split with the Seahawks. “Yeah, that is about as good of a first half as you are going to play, offensively, defensively,” Darlington boys head coach Anthony Heilbronn said after the game. “We didn’t turn the ball over much, shots seemed to go in, Qua’liek has a one on four, banks in a three from NBA range, you name it, it went right, perfect half.” But that is all it was, a perfect half, because the second half was a completely different story. For everything good thing Darlington did in the first half, it replaced it with something bad in the second half. “It got to the point where it was like it’s good we were up 38 because the way we turned it over, missed free throws, we didn’t help ourselves at that point and for me that is the frustrating part,” Heilbronn said. “We are a veteran team; we should know better. It is almost like we panicked. I’m not sure why, but we held on.” Unfortunately for Darlington this is not a new trend in the young season. “We play in spurts,” Heilbronn said. “We’ll play a good half. When we played at West Florence, we played a terrible first 26 minutes and then we got on fire in the last six to cut it down to eight. We were down 24 in that game. We haven’t put a full game together yet.” For the Falcons the game started off as well as anyone could have imagined. Myrtle Beach had no answer for the Falcons in both first and second quarters as offensively it seemed like every shot that Darlington took was falling while the defense was giving the Seahawks more trouble then they could handle. Up by 18 at the end of one, Darlington increased that lead in the second quarter and went into the half up by 32. The Falcons even increased that lead to 38 in the early part of the third quarter, but a nice little run by Myrtle Beach cut the lead back to 30 by the end of the quarter. With a 30-point lead heading into the fourth, it seemed obvious that this was going to be a blowout for the Falcons. Myrtle Beach, however, had different plans as it put together its best quarter of the game. Down by 30 at the start, shots started to fall for the Seahawks and Darlington went cold from the field resulting in a drastic change from how the game had been for a majority of the first three quarters. With 32.1 seconds left in the game the Seahawks cut the once 38-point lead to just five, but a missed opportunity for a rebound gave Darlington the last little push it needed to hold on as the Falcons hit five out of their last six free throws in the final 30 seconds to ice the game away. Outside of Lewis’ 32, Davion Bowens was second in scoring for the Falcons with 16 followed by Tre’Quan Scott’s 12 and Deuce Hudson’s 11. The win improves Darlington to 4-3 overall and 1-1 in the region.

Author: Stephan Drew

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