Going up against a Division I center can be an intimidating task for any high school basketball team, but for the Douglas boys' basketball team Thursday night, they took Sky View's 6-11 Jordan Stone (headed to Utah State next year) completely in stride.
After all, these Tigers spent the better part of the last two or three years guarding a D-I center (6-10 Douglas grad Keith Olson, now at Northern Arizona) every day in practice.
Seniors Jeff Nady and David Laird drew the primary assignments on Stone Thursday night and limited him to just eight points as Douglas cruised to a 69-54 win over the Utah school in the first round of the George Maldonado Tournament at Galena High School.
"I thought we did a good job on him (Stone) defensively," Douglas coach Corey Thacker said. "Jeff really stood up on him and David was really strong down in the middle there. As a team we worked really hard to keep him from getting the ball.
"The big guys really had a solid game for us tonight."
Overall, it was probably Douglas' best defensive effort of the year.
"The kids played hard right from the start," Thacker said. "They did a great job defensively, they got to the shooters, which was important because Sky View had a couple guys that can shoot from outside and we rotated over. We did the right things tonight and that was good to see."
While the Tigers flustered the Bobcats defensively, Laird helped break the game open early, scoring nine of his 15 points on the night in the first four minutes to help Douglas get out to a 14-6 lead.
Douglas built the lead to 20-10 through the first quarter, extended that to 33-21 by halftime and opened the game up to a 20-point lead after Nady hit a 3-pointer one minute into the fourth.
Nady was solid from outside, hitting three 3-pointers, which forced Stone out of the paint to guard him.
"I think especially in the second half when Jeff started hitting those shots, their big guy had to come out to guard him and that opened up a lot of lanes for us down low.
James McLaughlin scored nine points for the Tigers, Kevin Emm added eight, Ross Bertelone had five and CJ Marcotte had three.
Douglas hit a season-high eight 3-pointers as a team.
"I'm not going to complain when they're knocking those shots down," Thacker said. "It was just a case of those guys really moving well and getting open shots because of it. It was a good game for us. We still haven't put together a full 32 minutes yet, but that was a good effort."
