Amarino, Hawks pick up win

After Tuesday's contest between host Harper College and Olivet Nazarene JV, there was a sense of cautious optimism from new Hawks men's basketball coach Tony Amarino.

"It's a win," Amarino said. "We'll take the win and never give wins back. But there's a lot of room for improvement."

Harper controlled most of the game to take the men's basketball premiere 64-49.

The season-opening win by the debut coach is only the third in Harper's history, putting Amarino in good company with Bill Probst and Ed Molitor, Jr.

"With the first game (and) high expectations for us, I'm very impressed that we kept our composure for the most part," Amarino said. "We played well enough to win."

But Harper's control and defense was the key. The Hawks had two runs throughout to put healthy margins in its favor.

Fred Taylor was also in the Hawks favor. The ex-Conant forward dunked more than a half dozen baskets on his way to a team-high 23 points.

"It felt real good and we looked real good," said Taylor, whose early-game antics above the rim cost him an indirect technical foul. "I think I played well, but you can always play better."

Taylor's efforts weren't missed by Amarino.

"Freddy's an athlete," Amarino said. "He's going to get better. People won't believe this but Freddy's going to get better. He's a pure talent."

Baskets by Jon Winsor (6 points), Andy Merklein (7), Bobby Rhodes (16) and Taylor, as well as a 3-pointer by George Ramirez (two 3's) during a first-half run put the hosts up 25-7.

However, Harper was hardly allowed to coast and the Tigers fought back to get within 29-24 before the half, thanks to Ben Hall (9), Travis Proehl (9), Tyler Baldwin (12) and Dustin Rennewanz (5). Daniel Allen had 11 points for the Tigers.

"I think we can play a lot better," Amarino said. "We were a little sloppy and I don't think we shot the ball very well. We had some good looks, we just didn't knock them down."

Harper, which never trailed, had a 13-0 run in the second half which basically put the game out of reach at 52-34. Josh Toon sunk 2 baskets in that effort.

"The goal was to keep them to (as few) points as possible and just play our game," Taylor said. "We know if we play our game every game, we should get a win every time."

"I thought we played defense on them very well -- we only gave up 49 points," Amarino said. "We wanted to keep them under 65 points. We want to keep everyone under 65 points because we feel we can score more than that. I thought we did everything well defensively except we did not rebound the ball well."

Amarino is confident that more wins will follow with the first-game jitters out of the way.

"It was a nice team effort," he said. "A few guys were a little hesitant at times. Winning, even though they were tentative, is a good sign. Now they'll all have confidence and not worry about it."

Harper next play at 7 p.m. Friday, when it travels to Elgin Community College.