The Cedarville Yellow Jackets crushed the Salem International Tigers 89-61 on Thursday night. Cedarville shot 51 percent from the field, good for their third-best shooting performance of the season.
J.C. Faubion scored 17 points and pulled down 10 boards. The senior also distributed the ball well, dishing out seven assists. Kwenton Scott also contributed 17 points, all of which came in the second half.In addition, Scott grabbed seven rebounds in the contest.
Scott said the great performance stemmed from a change in his mindset.
“Coming off the knee injury, I was starting to kind of get down at times,” Scott said. “I had to realize I can’t keep letting myself digress like that.”
The sophomore also said head coach Pat Estepp has been an encouragement to him.
“Coach talked to me and spoke to me positively,” Scott said. “He told me to keep my head up and that he believes in me and that the team believes in me.”
The first half was neck-and-neck early on, with neither team pulling away early. At one point, a long four-minute stretch went by in which neither team scored.
As the final ten minutes of the first half came, Cedarville began to open up the game. J.C. Faubion aided in the effort, as he scored five of the Yellow Jackets’ seven points during a two-minute span of play. Cedarville took a 20-13 lead with 8:53 left to go, and continued to extend its lead as the half melted away.
Cedarville earned its first double-digit lead of the game with a Joey Morlan triple. The Yellow Jackets led 29-17 with 6:12 left in the half thanks to Morlan’s shot.
The Yellow Jackets earned a clutch bucket out of a timeout to deflate any momentum Salem had acquired to close the half. Justice Montgomery hit a layup with three seconds left, which gave Cedarville a 36-22 lead going into halftime.
In the second half, Cedarville slowly but surely put Salem International away. Patrick Bain splashed a triple to extend the lead to 50-32 with 15:23 left.
Scott caught fire in the middle of the second, scoring seven points in a row for Cedarville in the span of a minute and a half.
With 12:10 left, Bain appeared to suffer an eye injury while attempting to grab a rebound under Cedarville’s basket. The game was stopped as Bain was unable to continue to play, and Bain was removed from the contest. The junior did not return to the game.
Dazhonetae Bennett did not play in the game due to a concussion. Bain and Bennett, Cedarville’s number one and four scorers, are now dealing with injuries.
With under five minutes left to play, the bench was emptied, and Coach Estepp was happy with the production the reserves put forth. Freshman Jonathan Thomas and sophomore Kyle Laffin each had five points in the victory.
“I’m proud of our bench. It was good to get some guys in and get them some real game minutes,” Estepp said.
The Yellow Jackets (7-11, 0-4 GMAC) are off until Tuesday. Cedarville will have a home game against Central State (6-12) at 7:30 p.m.
Tim Miller is a freshman journalism student at Cedarville University. Tim loves anything that has to do with sports, and hopes to write about sports for a career after graduating from Cedarville.
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