St. Francis stops skid, handles Marmion
St. Francis had reason to be anxious for a win Friday, but the Spartans also had reasons to calm down a little.
Looking to snap an eight-game losing streak dating back to last season, St. Francis coach Shawn Healy preached patience and his team went out and used a patient motion offense to help knock off visiting Marmion 47-30 in the teams' Suburban Christian Conference opener to move to 1-3 on the year.
The visiting Cadets hurt themselves on offense by missing a number of close-range shots, but on the other end of the floor it was a strategic Spartans attack that consistently resulted in layups for the hosts, who led 15-4 after one quarter and then held off a Marmion rally in the third quarter to win going away.
"It feels great," said St. Francis center Ryan Coyle, who led all scorers with 18 points. "When we needed a bucket we set good screens and found the open man. Coach told us to play with a lot of emotion but to play with patience."
Jack Spangler opened the game with a 3-pointer for St. Francis, but from there the hosts did most of their damage on layups. The Cadets, meanwhile, missed a few layups in the first half and found themselves trailing 22-9 at the break before Mark Peters helped Marmion (1-4) make some noise in the third quarter and get as close as 23-18.
Healy was plenty happy with his team's offense on Friday but also praised Tony Vargyas' tough defense on Peters, the Cadets' leading scorer who was limited to 1 point in the first half before sinking a pair of 3s while scoring 12 of his team-high 15 points in the third quarter.
"We needed one," Healy said of the victory. "We basically try and instill on the kids that we need to get good looks and we need to have some patience. We're not an offensive juggernaut. To be honest, we'll take (shots) earlier if we get good looks, but sometimes you've got to work it around and work it around."
As for Vargyas, he was totally on board with his defensive assignment on one end, while helping work his team's patient offense on the other end.
"Coach asked me to guard him a little tighter and to pinch in, and all of the guys helped out with great defense tonight," said the senior forward who had 7 points and a pair of assists. "In the third quarter coach called a timeout and told us to get patient on offense. The whole concept of motion offense is to slow it down, take chunks off the clock and get good shots. It was good for us."
Marmion coach Rashon Burno, whose team missed 12 of 15 shots in the first half, didn't have an answer for the close-range misses.
"I've never been in a game where there have been that many missed pinpoint shots," he said. "We may have missed 20 layups and that's the ballgame. We've got big enough post guys to finish things off but they just didn't go in tonight."