SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

It didn’t take fans very long to figure out that Ellwood City Lincoln was a much better team than Avella.

The fact that Ellwood City wasn’t especially sharp on offense and still managed to trounce Avella, 63-32, said something about the quality of the Wolverines’ opponent last night in the feature game of the Ellwood City Tipoff Tournament.

But a win is a win, is a win and Ellwood City will take on Laurel at 7:30 tonight in the tournament’s championship game. Avella plays OLSH at 6 p.m. in the consolation.

Ellwood City did excel on defense against the Eagles.

The Wolverines forced Avella, a Class A school in Washington County, into 15 turnovers in the first half. Avella failed to connect on a field goal attempt in the second quarter and got off just two shots.
Avella went from the 1:52 mark of the first quarter until the 6-minute mark of the third without a field goal. That’s 11:52 and in that time, Ellwood built a 31-17 lead.

“We forced them into tough shots,” Wolverines coach Jason Bumblis said. “We also had some dumb fouls in that stretch that put them at the line.

“I thought we came out tight. We’ve been working so hard and this was the first game in front of some people and with the nice uniforms on. There was a little bit of pressure on us (to win).”

It showed in the first quarter. Despite outscoring Avella 15-7 in the period, the Wolverines missed a ton of easy field goal attempts, connecting on just 5 of 14 shots.

Things didn’t get much better in the second quarter, although Anthony Sainato, who scored 15 points, connected on a couple 3-point shots in the period.

The third quarter, when Ellwood City went on an 18-4 run, was more to Bumblis’ liking.

“I wasn’t hard on (the players) at the half because we were getting good shots,” he said. “But we need to make some of those shots against better teams.”

Sainato scored nine points in the third quarter and Chaz Roth chipped in with six of his 10 points. The Wolverines leading scorer was senior point guard Mike Sacco, who finished with 17.

Sacco scored just five points in the third period, but did a good job of getting the basketball to the right teammates at the right times.
“We’re better when we get everybody involved and we get balanced scoring,”

Sacco said. “That third quarter, that was more like us.”

Bumblis liked his players’ effort and, after going 4-20 last season, was pleased to start the campaign off with a victory. He’ll be happier if the Wolverines make it two in a row tonight.

“We’re taking baby steps,” he said of his team’s performance. “We’ll see what happens against Laurel.”