Falcons crush Silver Foxes in season opener
Tyshaun Johnson with the ball as the DHSl Falcons face the Lamar Silver Foxes at home on Tuesday, Nov. 29.
Photo by Drake Horton
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
This past Tuesday night, November 29, the Darlington Falcons boys’ basketball team opened up the 2016-2017 basketball season and they did it in grand style.
By halftime the game was essentially over and in reality Lamar never truly had a chance as the Silver Foxes were shorthanded with other players still playing football.
All in all, when the final buzzer rang, it was the Falcons who were victorious, winning 84-15. Lamar scored eight of its 15 in the first quarter and then scored only one field goal each in the final three quarters as Darlington basically dominated in all facets of the game.
“We started off really slow trying to make threes and all that,” Darlington head coach Ken Howle said after the game. “We need to make the game kind of ugly and fast. Some guys came off the bench and showed us some good stuff.”
Being such a young team to start the season, this was the type of game the Howle hoped for because not only does the win help with a young, inexperienced team’s confidence, every player on the bench got to play.
“It’s always good when everybody plays and everybody does some good things,” Howle said, commenting on the complete team effort against Lamar. “That group that finished the game was all sophomores.”
Darlington had four starters in double-digits scoring, to go along with a total of 54 points from the bench.
Malike Cooper was the leading scorer of the night with 17, outscoring the entire Lamar basketball team. Kris’Shawn Hickman finished with 14, Sa’von Williams had 11 and Tabais Dixon had ten to round out the Falcons double-digit scorers.
Weekly Recap
While Darlington started the past week off with a win over the Silver Foxes, the Falcons took to the hardcourt two other times and both occasions were not as nice as the first.
First, on the road against the Marion Swamp Foxes, the Falcons lost on the very next night by a score 67-58. Despite a lead at the half, Darlington had a rough third quarter and it was just too much to overcome.
The second and final game of the week was on the road as well and it was against a bitter rival, the Wilson Tigers and like the game before the Falcons were on the losing end, dropping the game by a score of 67-53.
Darlington got behind early in the first quarter and stayed by for the entire game, despite outscoring the Tigers by four points in the second half.