Before Friday night’s home basketball game, Mount St. Joseph coach Pat Clatchey was telling those assembled around him how young his team was. Fortunately for Clatchey, they grew up quickly, jumping out to an impressive lead and routing visiting Parkville, 89-30.
The visiting Knights scored the first basket just 19 seconds into the game on a Brenden Turkson jumper. By the time Parkville had scored again with 1:23 left in the first quarter, the Gaels had 18 points on the board. It was just that kind of night.
As incredible as it may sound, Parkville junior Kyliek Howard led all scorers with 18 points. Aaron Early (13 points), Joseph Green (12 points), Bryton Barrett (10 points) and Brandon Holmes (10 points) all scored in double figures for the Gaels.
“Our team is extremely young, and I think anytime you can get them time on the court then its beneficial,” Clatchey said. “Tonight, we had a lot of depth. We had some offensive balance and I think they played very unselfish.”
To say Mount St. Joseph (6-2) got off to a fast start would be an understatement. The Gaels, who have dropped games to Loyola Blakefield and Annapolis Area Christian to start the season, played a stifling defense early. With the ball, the Gaels hit two 3-pointers and tallied three more points when B.J. Ranson was fouled when shooting another, to jump out to a 9-2 lead.
At that point, the defense got even better. The bigger and more aggressive Gaels kept forcing turnover after turnover in the first quarter, and Parkville helped with some ill-advised 3-point tries.
“We just had to do what we had to do,” Mount St. Joseph junior Tourean Thompson said. “We had a game plan and we came out and executed and played unselfishly as a team.”
As successful as the Gaels were, they had a little trouble with Howard. He ended up with eight of Parkville’s 14 points before halftime.
The second half was much like the first, but many of Parkville’s wounds in the third quarter were self-inflicted. The Knights kept getting to the free throw line in the third quarter but made just 1 of 8 shots from the charity stripe. To Clatchey’s credit, he began to empty his bench and the Gaels got points from 11 of the 14 players on the roster.
“We just wanted to play smart, play hard and do the things that we practiced,” Ranson said. “We need games like this to work on ourselves. We’ve been working on ways to share the basketball and get everyone involved and I think we showed that in this game.”
Parkville coach Ben Thompson said his young group, which only has three seniors on the roster, will learn from the game.
“You have to tip your hat to Mount St. Joe and how they played,” Thompson said. “They were aggressive coming out and obviously they just punched us in the face early on and we just never recovered. We’ll have to lick our wounds from this and get ready for New Town in a big Baltimore County matchup next week.”
Mount St. Joseph 89, Parkville 30
Park 4 10 3 13 – 30
MSJ 21 19 21 28 – 89
PRV: Kyliek Howard 18, Derion Thomas 4, Mekhi Dooley 3, Trias Wilkerson 2, Brenden Turkson 2, Darrian Alexander 1.
MSJ: Aaron Early 13, Joseph Green 12, Bryton Barrett 10, Brandon Holmes 10, Zikom Etolue 9, B.J. Ranson 8, Tourean Thompson 8, Kenneth Anthony II 6, Shamal Harttgrove 5, Braydon Young 5, Enrico Purnell 3.