Flyers Roll Past Cardinals in Home Scrimmage

The Sandhills Community College men's basketball team picked up a convincing win over the Central International College Cardinals at home Wednesday night inside the Hanger. It was the second scrimmage of the season for the Flyers and first at home.  Sandhills shook off a slow start and put on an offensive clinic, coming away with a 79-point 138-59 win.

I thought we controlled the scrimmage from the tap. No disrespect for Central International, but we've got a lot of guys that have been practicing really hard and I thought they did a good job of really playing up tempo. Was it a perfect game? No, by no means was it a perfect game, but I did like our energy, and I thought we played hard," Sandhills Basketball coach Mike Apple said.

It was back and forth between both sides to start things off in the first half. An 11-0 run by the Flyers helped push their lead out from 8-6 to 19-6. From there the Flyers found themselves in the driver's seat capitalizing on scoring opportunities and locking up the Cardinals on defense to go into the half with a 62-30 lead.

The Flyers put pressure on Central International to start off the second half only allowing 10 points in the early minutes of the game while extending their lead out to 74-40. The Flyers from there continued to pour in the baskets and eventually padded their lead with a 100-46 advantage outscoring the Cardinals 64-19 the rest of the way for the win.

"Oh, it's fun being back on the home court. It's fun, you know, going through the process. And, you know, the biggest thing that you gotta understand is that it's always a process and you can't skip steps. You gotta build and you gotta talk about doing the right thing defensively to start with. And, you know we're trying to learn how to do that offensively. What you look for is being unselfish. And I thought our guys were pretty unselfish tonight, which was a good start. So, yeah just excited about it all," Apple said.

"We are feeling pretty confident about the season. We are looking forward to the season. Looking forward to doing big things. This year we are ring chasing. That's our goal this year," Antoine Piper said.

 Piper led the way for the Flyers with 16 points, four rebounds and one assist. Titus Cunningham followed with 15 points and two rebounds. Demyron Williams finished the night with 13 points, two rebounds and three assists.

"Damien Robinson, a good example. He was an all-region performer last year, freshman of the year. He's improved. He's a much better perimeter player than he was last year. So, you know, obviously we're looking for big things from him, you know, Demyron Williams can't say enough about him and the fact that, you know, he came in here as more of a wing player and now he's a point guard and he made some nice plays to tonight. So, yeah, I'm really pleased with what most of the guys did over the summer, and we just gotta keep building. Our freshmen are getting acclimated really well," Apple said.

"Really just getting my teammates involved first and then just letting the game come to me. Not trying to force anything. But yeah, that's really how we came out with the big win," Piper said. "It felt good man.  I'm not gonna lie it felt good to be back in the Hangar 'cause everybody's sharing the ball. We just have fun out there. So it was, it was a good experience."

The Flyers defense stepped up big, scoring 39 points off turnovers and out rebounding the Cardinals 67-32 coming away with a 57.5 defensive rebound percentage.

"Zach Noel from White Oak did a great job for us rebounding the basketball. He's gotta kind of get over his shyness. Antoine hasn't been able to play for the last couple years and he's enjoying just getting back out on the floor and getting the feeling like he's a basketball player again. So, I think he's gonna get better. But just overall glad to be back out there," Apple said.

Sandhills will travel to Brunswick Community College on Sunday for their third scrimmage of the season.

Z. Ciboth