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Champion holds off young NF Tigers

Tribune Chronicle / Eric Murray Drake Batcho (24) of Champion passes to Zac Lindsay as Evan Purnell (3) and Joey Urso (11) of Newton Falls defend.

CHAMPION — The Champion Flashes boys basketball team downed the Newton Falls Tigers, 63-52, Friday night, on the strength of four Flashes scoring in double-figures. Senior point guard Lucas Nasonti led the way with 17 points.

“He’s a player, he gets after it. He creates a lot of his own stuff when he’s at the guard position,” Champion coach Jamie Carrino said of Nasonti. “I thought he got in the gaps well into their zone, had some nice jumpers out of that. Lucas creates a lot of that on his own.”

In the early going, the Flashes struggled against the size of Newton Falls, and namely, Ben Simpson. The 6-foot-4 senior forward carried the banner for the Tigers all night, and he showed it right out of the gate.

Simpson scored the team’s first seven points, as a trio of layups gave the Tigers an early lead 7-4 lead. While the Flashes played sloppy throughout the opening period, between turnovers and missed wide-open 3-pointers, the young Tigers could not capitalize and eventually, seven opening-period points by Nasonti tied the game at 11 heading into the second quarter.

In the second, the Flashes picked up where they left off at the end of the first quarter, as a Nasonti layup and jumper, plus, layups by Zac Lindsay and Noah Bayus, put Champion ahead by eight, 23-15, with 2:37 left in the first-half.

Tribune Chronicle / Eric Murray Joey Urso (11) of Newton Falls dribbles the ball up the court as Champion’s Lucas Nasonti (23) pursues.

By half, the Champion lead had been extended to 10, thanks to 13 points from Nasonti and five from Michael Turner, who made plays all over the court.

“Just some nerves early on,” Nasonti said of the team’s first-quarter struggles. “It’s a rough game, but coach (Carrino) did a good job calming us down, he’s really good with that. Got us back on track.”

However, the Tigers, who are very inexperienced in their backcourt, thanks to the graduation of prolific scorer Jaden Walton and do-it-all Noah Suarez, found a way to rally in the third quarter.

Simpson continued to dominate the boards, while a 3-pointer and a jumper by Joey Urso closed the gap to just four points, 36-32, with 4:23 left in the quarter.

Despite just a five-point lead heading into the fourth, Champion (2-0) got back on track with a Nasonti layup-and-one, plus back-to-back 3-pointers by Drake Batcho. That gave Champion a nine-point advantage with less than three and a half minutes remaining, ultimately dropping Newton Falls to 0-2 on the season.

“We are very inexperienced, especially at the guards. We throw the ball right to the other team,” Newton Falls coach Roy Sembach said, laughing. “We’re doing that way too often. And that’s why they (Champion) built a lead, we threw about six passes right to them, and then they went down and scored, so that was the difference.

“(However) I thought we did a lot of growing up in the second half, (our turnovers were) far fewer in the second-half and we fought and got within four points. We ran out of gas a little bit there, but this is a very talented team we played. To be able to hang in there and come back after the disastrous start is encouraging.”

While Newton Falls, which was paced by the inside presence of Simpson and his 29 points, looks to find a way to fill the offensive void left by Walton, the Flashes, on the other hand, hope that a major improvement in Nasonti’s game can help carry the team to several more victories in the coming weeks.

“What I like most about Lucas this year is his defensive effort,” Carrino explained. “Everybody knows Lucas has got it on the offensive end, (but) his defensive effort, as long as that continues to get better, I think it will get contagious to the rest of the team.

“That’s going to be a big key for us going forward. If we can get it together, defensively, and keep that for four quarters, we’re going to be in business.”

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