Marietta’s Zaiden Wittekind brings the ball into the paint during Friday’s season-opener against Athens. Marietta won, 68-23.
(Photo by Mike Morrison)
<!–
The Marietta Tigers looked more like a team in mid-season form than one in their season opener Friday night at Sutton Gymnasium.
Marietta erupted for 24 first quarter points and rolled to a 68-23 win over the Athens Bulldogs in the first game of the year for both teams.
The Tigers converted more field goals (26) than Athens did points but it all started early on when a pressuring Tiger defense caused all kinds of problems for the Bulldogs.
“We played really hard tonight and I thought we pressured the ball very well,” said second-year Tiger head coach Austin Gardner. “We mixed up our defenses and we weren’t always in the right spots but that’s game one and our kids playing as hard as they did made up for some of those things.”
Athens turned the ball over seven times in the first quarter and Marietta junior guard Seth Britton was responsible for four of those.
The Tigers spotted Athens the first field goal of the game and promptly reeled off 24 consecutive points to basically put things away before they even got started.
Athens finally snapped the Tiger skid late in the quarter and scored the final three points to cut the Tiger lead to 24-5.
Essentially the way the Tiger defense was playing they could have not scored another bucket the rest of the way and still won but they went right back to work offensively in the second quarter.
Tiger big man Alex Kendall opened up the second quarter by coming up with a steal and cashing it in at the other end to push the lead back over 20.
In addition to playing great defense all game long, the Tigers shot the ball well from the outside including second quarter triples by Brayden Jones and Owen Riley to increase their lead to 35-7.
After Jones’ triple the Bulldogs played their best stretch of basketball in the game as they outscored MHS 9-2 in the final few minutes to cut the lead to 36-16 at the break.
The Tigers regained their composure in a hurry to begin the third period as they scored 13 of the first 14 points of the second half to put things out of reach for certain.
Gardner used a rotation of at least 10 kids from the very beginning of the game and the Tigers looked fresh all night.
“We have a deep team and we got to show that with three kids getting three fouls on them in the first half,” said Gardner. “Overall we want to play active and aggressive and thought we did a good job of that.”
Eight different Tigers scored at least a point led by Kendall’s 19 points and nine boards.
Kendall showed once again he can be a factor under the basket or away from it as he also came up with six steals while dishing out three assists.
“Alex is our best player, there’s no question about it but he is doing a good job of facilitating and making himself available inside and on the perimeter,” said Gardner of his 6-foot-8 senior who missed just one of his seven field goals attempts in the game. “With his luxury to play inside and out it gives us some flexibility and he’s going to get a lot of attention so the other guys are going to have to step up and they did a great job of that tonight.”
Kendall got plenty of help from his friends led by Riley who came off the bench to score 14 points.
Jones chipped in with nine points for the winners while Britton added eight to go along with five steals.
Marietta out-rebounded the Bulldogs by a healthy 31-11 clip and shot a solid 54 percent from the floor (26-48).
Defensively the Tigers were tenacious all game long as they forced the Bulldogs into 26 turnovers in the game.
“We got after it big time and pressured the ball and there’s still some things we need to clean up defensively,” said Gardner. “We got some blocks and we got some steals and some turnovers and that’s our best offense.”
Before the game Gardner spoke to the large crowd and the Tigers held a moment of silence in honor of their teammate Ashton Harris who passed away in July after a battle with leukemia.
The Tigers are dedicating their season to Harris and wore T-shirts in his honor while leaving a spot empty on their bench in his memory.
Marietta will return to action Tuesday back home against the Logan Chieftains.