The first of two regular season Southwest County rivalry games between the Cave Spring and Hidden Valley boys basketball teams came down to push and pull Tuesday night in the Cave Spring gym.
Hidden Valley wanted to pull the ball out to the perimeter, Cave Spring wanted to push it to the basket.
Push won out.
Taking control in the last four minutes of the second quarter and adding to their lead to start the second half, Cave Spring pulled away for the convincing 63-34 River Ridge win.
“It was a battle of wills,” Hidden Valley head coach Kevin Burcham noted afterward. “We wanted to control the tempo, Cave Spring wanted to run. Our game plan was to give us a chance at the end. We did a pretty good job for twelve minutes of playing the pace we wanted and keeping ourselves in the ballgame.”
Hidden Valley only trailed 10-8 after one quarter, and was hanging tough, down 19-15, midway through the second when Cave Spring finished with a 10-0 run that was started by senior Brody Hicks’ steal and slam and Hick’s 3-pointer, followed by senior Mason Reyer’s bomb from behind-the-arc that was followed by a Reyer steal and breakaway layup that sent the Knights to the halftime break up 29-15.
“We talked about their run at halftime,” Burcham said. “We needed to weather the storm. In the third quarter we just needed to chip away. We just couldn’t do it. Cave Spring is a very talented ball club. They kept us off balance.”
Cave Spring quickly made the paint a no-mans-land for the Titans. The Knights opened the second half with a 16-2 surge keyed by junior Jake Furrow’s old fashion 3-point play with 4:49 left5 that put Cave Spring up 36-17 and a NBA-range 3-pointer by Hicks. The Knights went to the final 8 minutes up 45-20.
Hidden Valley showed plenty of game in the final quarter, scoring 14 points, twelve coming from a quartet of 3-pointers. The Titans hit 6 treys for the game, including 3 from 6ft-4 sophomore guard Jonah Fitzgerald.
But, the Cave Spring defense and dominance on the boards were too much for the visitors. Hidden Valley could only muster 4 second-chance points.
“We did a good job of taking away what they wanted,” Cave Spring head coach Jacob Gruse said afterward inside the Knight locker room. “We did a good job on the boards and we played sound defense. We started out sluggish and they lulled us to sleep at the start. But, we made some adjustments, got after them and got after it. Any time you hold a team to 34 points, you’ve done something. And, they got 14 of those points in the fourth quarter when we were playing all of our players.”
“Cave Spring does a good job of ringing it up,” Burcham added. “We get another shot at them later in the season at our place.”
Reyer finished with a game-high 15 points for the Knights, with Hicks adding 13 and Furrow chipping in 10.
Fitzgerald paced the Titans with 11 points, while junior guard Joseph Keenan followed with 8.
Bill Turner
