Boys basketball: Eastland grabs early lead, rolls past Amboy for NUIC South victory

AMBOY – Playing shorthanded because of COVID-19 protocols, the Amboy boys basketball team knew it was behind the eight ball from the start Tuesday night.

Then Eastland took control with a huge run to end the first quarter, and that buried the Clippers in too deep of a hole to dig out of as the Cougars rolled to a 51-23 NUIC South road win.

Carsen Heeren’s 3-pointer with 3:45 left in the first quarter gave Eastland a lead it wouldn’t relinquish. It made it 5-3 Cougars, and they proceeded to score the next 12 points to stretch the lead to 17-3 through the opening eight minutes.

“That really helped us out, because we were kind of playing a little sluggish to start the game,” Eastland guard Kellen Henze said. “Once we got that run, everyone started gaining a little confidence, the shots started to fall, and it really opened things up for us.”

“It was really big for us,” teammate Andy Anderson said. “Carsen started it for us, and that just helped everybody get going. Our coaches said we were almost 50% on our 3s, and that will win you a lot of games.”

Heeren scored 10 of his 14 points in the first quarter, and that seemed to open things up for others. Henze finished with 15 points, nine rebounds, three assists and three steals, and Anderson had 12 points, eight rebounds, five assists and two steals.

Carson Heckman added five points and three assists, and the Cougars shared the ball well all night: They assisted on 15 of their 21 field goals.

“That really helped us out tonight, all those assists, just getting the ball moving around to move the defense,” Henze said. “That created some wide-open shots, and I think that’s why we were able to knock so many down tonight.”

“We’ve been talking a lot about sharing the ball, and the coaches have been really emphasizing that,” Anderson said. “We finally did it today, and it worked out really well for us.”

Amboy, playing without five players and coach Brad Dunlap, just couldn’t recover from the early Eastland surge.

Brennan Blaine scored first, then Andruw Jones hit a free throw for a 3-2 lead with 4:02 left in the first. But Blaine’s free throw with 6:41 left in the second quarter was the only point in the next 6:19, until Kyler McNinch’s putback with 5:43 left before halftime.

“Coach Dunlap’s not here, and we’re missing five players, so we just knew going into the game that the odds were against us. We just had to try our best to do whatever we could to battle,” Blaine said. “I thought we started off good, but at the end of the first quarter they went on a 15-0 run, and from there we tried to battle back and I thought we played hard, but that 15-0 run really killed us.”

Blaine’s 3-pointer got the Clippers within 21-9 with 4:40 left in the second, but Henze put back his own miss and sank a free throw to complete a three-point play, then he took a post feed from Anderson and scored a layup for a 27-9 lead. He hit another basket to answer Caden Wittenauer’s runout layup, then threw a long pass to Anderson for a fast-break bucket for Eastland.

The Cougars led 31-14 at halftime after Amboy’s Ian Eller banked in a 3 in the final second of the first half.

Anderson scored on an inbounds play and hit a 3 midway through the third quarter, then found a wide-open Heckman for a 3 and a 41-18 lead with 3:45 left in the period. Anderson added another runout layup, then Henze hit a free throw before Heeren hit a jumper for a 46-21 lead heading into the fourth.

Another three-point play by Henze and a basket by Heeren pushed the lead to 51-21 with 6:20 remaining, setting the running clock in motion.

“We knew going into that we would have to stop Henze from scoring, because he’s been just going on a tear this season, so our goal was to try and shut him down; I feel like we did that pretty well, but they were making shots that first quarter,” Eller said. “The second half of the first quarter, they made three 3s, and that kind of got us down. But I think we did a good job of not letting it get too much in our head, and we tried to battle back.”

Eastland’s defense kept the Clippers from doing that. Amboy tried to get the ball to Blaine in the lane, but the Cougars made that difficult, and as a result it stifled the Clippers’ attack for much of the night.

“We were trying to keep it out of the paint, because we know that if teams get it down there, they’re going to finish,” Henze said. “We wanted to keep it around the perimeter and take our chances with making them shoot 3s.”

“We worked really hard trying to get the ball into the high post, but they were playing really good defense,” Blaine said. “They were stopping our post entry, they were stopping our shots, and we tried out best, but they played really well tonight.”

Blaine and Eller both finished with eight points and two steals to lead Amboy, with Eller adding three rebounds. Wittenauer added five rebounds and four steals.