When Dulaney needed senior point guard Chase Huber to score, he did — nine points in the first half. When Dulaney needed Huber to facilitate in crunch time, he did that, too — three assists, a clutch rebound and a timely steal. It all added up to the Lions holding off host Lansdowne, 59-52.
His final assist came to Jayden Corley-Pugh (11 points) with 2:36 left in the game which gave the Lions a 52-48 lead, but Topaz Norris (14 points, three steals, six rebounds) brought Lansdowne within two with 1:40 remaining,
Drew Ranck (11 points, 17 rebounds) scored on a layup with just over a minute left to put the Lions back up four and the Lions (6-2) made five free throws in the final minute to salt away the game.
“I was scoring a lot in the first half, so they were trying to take away my shot and I’m a pass-first guard at heart, so when my teammates are cutting, I just have to get them the ball,” Huber said. “We’ve been in that position many times this season and we turned on each other, but today we stayed calm and we were able to pull out a tough win.”
Huber finished with 14 points, six steals, five rebounds and four assists.
“That’s my engine right there,” Dulaney coach James Dickey said. “He gets in a zone. He’s been with me for four years and I trust him to make the right play in crunch time when we needed it the most. He stepped up big.”
Both teams started off sloppy with several turnovers and the game was tied at 14 after the first quarter. Ranck had five points to lead the Lions in the first quarter and Trevor Howard had eight points, including two 3-pointers in the period.
Late in the quarter, the Lions brought Jesse Faulker (14 points) off the bench and he scored, giving Lions a lead, but a dynamic one-handed follow shot by Serigne Babou (10 rebounds, seven blocked shots, four points, two steals) tied it at the buzzer.
When Dulaney went from zone to a man-to-man defense in the second quarter, Faulkner provided the energy with eight points, including a rim-rocking follow dunk late in the quarter, helping the Lions take a 33-23 halftime lead.
“He’s our little spark plug, our energizer bunny,” Dickey said. “He had an incredible game off the bench.”
The Lions forced seven turnovers in the second quarter and Huber had three steals.
“In the zone, we were giving them too many open shots. So once we put ball pressure on them and went man-to-man, it was a lot better and that’s when we put a little distance in that second quarter and we just had to ride that throughout the rest of the game,” Huber said.
A pair of 3-pointers by Norris early in the third quarter sparked a Viking rally that cut the lead to six. The Lions held them off thanks to the rebounding of Ranck, who had six offensive boards in the quarter.
“Our big fella, big Drew had an incredible game,” Dickey said.
“There were plenty of possessions where we stopped them and they got points off second and third-chance shots where, if we get more rebounds off the first shot, it’s a totally different game I think,” Lansdowne coach Steve Coursey said.
The second-quarter lapse by the Vikings (4-4) was all too familiar for Coursey, whose squad fell behind New Town and Milford Mill by double digits and rallied to lose by three in both contests.
“We’ve had games where we’ve been in it and we kinda put our heads down and take a couple possessions off and don’t play as hard,” Coursey said. “I thought we played our hearts off this whole time. We were right there and it could have went either way.”
Howard finished with a team-high 17 points and senior Duan Jackson added 15 to lead the Vikings.
While Lansdowne’s season has included digging out of deep deficits, Dulaney has struggled to build on leads.
“Our biggest issue right now is we are having problems putting teams away. Like, we were up 12 and they went on a run. Luckily, tonight we were able to fight off the run,” Dickey said. “We’ve done a good job this year taking team’s best shots, but we have to find a way to put teams away.”
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