5 hours Ago By Brayden McAtamney
On a day where schools were closed and several games were postponed, the Lake Shore Shorians navigated the negative temperatures and visited the New Haven Rockets, taking out their Macomb Area Conference Gold adversaries, 67-59, on Tuesday, Jan. 21. The Rockets (5-8, 1-4 Gold) opened the game on a 9-0 run, forcing Lake Shore head coach Mike Jackson to quickly burn a timeout.
That short break was clearly beneficial for the Shorians – they came out and out-scored New Haven 18-5 the rest of the quarter, thanks in part to a 10-point explosion across just four minutes from junior point guard Jason Pruitt, who used his pickpocketing prowess and speed to claim easy baskets. And though Pruitt continued in the second quarter – he went into halftime with 16 – New Haven went on a 15-5 run to re-claim the lead, which they’d take into halftime. New Haven also had a junior guard going off – Ryan Abuan nailed three 3-pointers in the second alone and went into the break with 17.
But unlike Pruitt, Abuan didn’t score the rest of the game. Meanwhile, the Shorian guard had 11 points in the second half and nine in the fourth quarter, during which Lake Shore (9-5, 3-2) out-scored the Rockets 22-9 to pull away with the league victory. Jackson held high praise for his point guard, even likening Pruitt to former Lake Shore guard Jalen Jackson, his son, who led the team to 30 wins in his final two seasons as the Shorians’ point guard.
“(Pruitt) has his moments where, you know, (we’re) upset, but he has moments where he could turn it on and score,” Jackson said. “I think he could score with anybody in our conference. The other part is being a facilitator, get other guys to score.
And I think down the stretch, that’s what he’s learning. “And if you keep doing that, next year it’s gonna be (better). So he’s all right.
He’s still learning and, I think right now, he’s one of the best guards in our conference.” That production has been a godsend for Lake Shore with Adam Rach, one of the team’s top two scorers, missing time recently with an injury. Pruitt scored 24 points against L’Anse Creuse, 30 against St.
Clair and 26 against Lakeview. “Being able to overcome that (Rach injury) again this year is just taking time for us to figure out who’s going to be that second or that first scorer, spreading the flow and doing things like that,” Jackson said. “And so we’re growing on learning that part.
...
(We’re) growing as a team, understanding what we can do and what we can’t do without him. But hopefully in a week or two, we got a surprise coming.” Max Miner scored 16 for Lake Shore.
Ja’Sean Dean added 12, Steven Likins had nine and Brendan Manor had four. Luke Lemke chipped in two. New Haven has had some figuring out to do of themselves.
Fresh off losing their entire starting lineup and 14 players in two years, the program has a distinct lack of experienced varsity players compared to some of its rivals. It has resulted in the Rockets losing six of their last seven games. /*! This file is auto-generated */!function(d,l){"use strict";l.
querySelector&&d.addEventListener&&"undefined"!=typeof URL&&(d.wp=d.
wp||{},d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage||(d.
wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if((t||t.
secret||t.message||t.value)&&!/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/.
test(t.secret)){for(var s,r,n,a=l.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret="'+t.
secret+'"]'),o=l.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),c=new RegExp("^https?:$","i"),i=0;i
length;i++)o[i].style.display="none";for(i=0;i
length;i++)s=a[i],e.source===s.contentWindow&&(s.
removeAttribute("style"),"height"===t.message?(1e3<(r=parseInt(t.value,10))?r=1e3:~~r<200&&(r=200),s.
height=r):"link"===t.message&&(r=new URL(s.getAttribute("src")),n=new URL(t.
value),c.test(n.protocol))&&n.
host===r.host&&l.activeElement===s&&(d.
top.location.href=t.
value))}},d.addEventListener("message",d.wp.
receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){for(var e,t,s=l.querySelectorAll("iframe.
wp-embedded-content"),r=0;r
random().toString(36).substring(2,12),e.
src+="#?secret="+t,e.setAttribute("data-secret",t)),e.contentWindow.
postMessage({message:"ready",secret:t},"*")},!1)))}(window,document); “We're trying to kind of find that consistency,” said New Haven head coach Tedaro France. “We had a great start. You know, when we play well as a team, defend, we can do good things, but then sometimes the youth shows.
And one thing I came to do as a coach is teach experience. So we got to learn from failure and keep on growing.” There’s still senior leadership on the roster.
Lamar Pearson and Lamar Pearson both had 13 points in the loss, but their impacts, along with Abuan’s, go beyond the box score. “They're our backbone,” France said. “The team goes through them.
They've been doing a good job of getting young guys going, and when they play well, we do well. And they have been as consistent as they can be. “We still got to continue to get better, continue to work hard, and I think that the more and more games we play, the more confidence that they will have (in) late game situations, close game situations; to be able to come out on the winning side of those.
”.
