By Rob Potter
ROSCOE — December 17, 2010 — It was a battle of the Blue Devils on Monday night as the Roscoe Blue Devils hosted the Margaretville Blue Devils in a non-league basketball game.
Roscoe jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first three minutes of the game and never looked back on its way to a 62-37 victory over Margaretville, a Section IV Class D team.
Senior point guard Adam Hendrix swished a pair of 3-point shots to help Roscoe (2-2) take its early 10-point advantage.
Margaretville (1-3) finally got on the scoreboard with 5:07 left in the first quarter when Mitch Hull made a free throw.
But 16 seconds later, Hendrix answered with another successful shot from beyond the 19-foot, 9-inch arc to extend Roscoe’s lead to 13-1.
In the last two minutes of the quarter, Hull scored a basket inside the lane on one Margaretville possession and swished a foul shot on another possession to cut the Roscoe lead to single digits at 15-6.
However, the host Blue Devils opened up the second period with a 17-5 scoring run. Hendrix netted 11 points and Brad Dreher had four points during that run as Roscoe pushed its advantage to 32-11 with 2:00 left until halftime.
With 6:10 to go in the third quarter, Jordan Tallman scored inside the key to give Roscoe a 20-point lead at 38-18.
In the first half especially, Roscoe played aggressive defensively, which caused several steals and turnovers. Many times those steals and turnovers led directly to points for the home team.
Hendrix and Dreher each recorded a double-double to lead Roscoe to victory. Hendrix scored a game-high 28 points and dished out 10 assists, while Dreher, a freshman forward, had 13 points and 12 rebounds.
Also contributing for Roscoe were Willie Browne and Jesse Huggins. Browne had seven points, seven rebounds and five assists. Huggins grabbed 10 rebounds and had four assists.
“Getting out to that early lead helped us,” Roscoe Coach Fred Ahart said. “Certainly it was a key to the game.
“I thought all of our guys played very well tonight,” he added.
Ahart also noted that defense was a big part of his team’s victory.
“Our defense helped us set up our offense,” he said. “We were able to transition from defense to offense very quickly.”
Hull paced Margaretville with 14 points, while teammates Danny Jenkins and Jon Fairbairn added eight points and six points, respectively.
“Number 10 is tough to defend,” said Margaretville Coach Dave Goodchild, referring to Hendrix. “He scored more than 20 points tonight and made some great shots.
“But it wasn’t all number 10,” Goodchild added. “Roscoe’s other players stepped up and made some baskets, too.”
Goodchild noted that a switch in his team’s defensive plan helped for a little while.
“I thought that when we switched to a man-to-man defense we slowed them down a little,” he said. “But I think our guys got tired playing the man-to-man defense.”