Flyers Clash With Titans for Hard Fought Win

The Sandhills Community College Flyers picked up a hard-fought win over the Guilford Tech Community College Titans Wednesday night inside the Hangar. The Flyers shook off a shaky first six minutes of the game and put together a series of runs to push their lead out, padding it en route to an 87-71 win over the Titans.

"We had some good possessions where we did score six, eight points in a row. The thing that just absolutely killed us was turnovers. 29 turnovers for the game. You're very fortunate to win a game and make 20-plus turnovers and you know we've gotta correct that. I think the guys in the locker room understand that there's a lot of long cases because of what they were doing, and you know the biggest thing to do is fix that," Flyers basketball coach Mike Apple said.

Both the Flyers (2-0) and the Titans (0-2) battled from the start, trading the lead back and forth with neither side gaining an advantage. With the score tied at 11-11, the Flyers turned the game and momentum with a 12-0 run that eventually led the Flyers to a 23-11 lead. The Titans gained momentum and outscored the Flyers 12-9 in the middle of the first half, but Sandhills then put together another run of their own to take a 42-29 lead into the locker room.

Sandhills picked up the second half right where they left off, jumping on the Titans early and extending their lead out to 56-37. Guilford Tech kept chipping away and staying in the game with the Flyers. A couple of scoring runs, including an 8-0 run, were all the Flyers needed to put the game out of reach, holding off a Titans comeback for the win.

Antoine Piper led the way for the Flyers, finishing with 24 points, seven rebounds, and two assists. Damien Robinson followed with 15 points, 19 rebounds, and four blocked shots, marking another double-double performance, his second in the opening two games. Zack Noel and Diamante Shepard each finished with eight points.

"I feel like the first couple minutes of the game we were kind of sluggish and we came out a little slow, but we put the pieces together," Piper said. "I feel like we turned the ball over a little bit too much, but we'll get better."

The Titans were led by Deuce Ford, who finished with 25 points, nine rebounds, and one assist in the loss to the Flyers.

"We kind of listened to the game plan. We knew number three (Deuce Ford) was going to come out hot. We knew that he was the key to their offense, so we kind of slowed him down and just shut their offense down and took off from there," Piper said.

"He's a good player and he's averaged double-doubles thus far. So, we really concentrated on trying to guard him and I don't think we did a great job on him because he had 25 points. We did stop his rebounding though; he only had nine rebounds and only two of those were offensive rebounds. So that was a good deal. I thought we did a good job handling their perimeter players for the most part of the game," Apple said.

Sandhills will now hit the road for a weekend trip to Cleveland, Ohio. They tip off Saturday at 1 p.m. against Lorain County Community College.

"Lorain County Community College is always in the National Tournament bid and then Bryant & Stratton is a D2 college that's a little down from last year, but both teams are gonna be a good test for us and we're looking forward to the challenge," Apple said.

Z. Ciboth