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JFK’s Taylor scores 51 in OT victory

WARREN — Byron Taylor made it a senior night to remember for the John F.Kennedy Eagles, scoring 51 points in a 100-93 overtime victory over Trinity Friday night.

Taylor got started early with two quick 3’s and an emphatic dunk to end the first quarter. He then erupted for 20 second-quarter points in a virtuoso performance, nailing four more 3-pointers in the process.

“I’ve had a couple quarters like that in my career. It was nice to do it on senior night,” Taylor said. “It was ball movement. The team was giving me the ball. I was getting shots. We were all playing well on both ends of the floor. The pressure on defense led to more points on offense. We played great defense.”

JFK got out to a 14-7 lead. The Eagles then fell into their biggest drought of the game and went scoreless for the next five minutes. Trinity went on a 14-0 run, and the score was 21-14, Trojans. Taylor’s dunk made it, 23-18, Trinity, at the end of one quarter.

While Taylor was on fire, his teammates and fellow seniors B.J. Williams, and Tyler James helped the Eagles score 34 points in the second to take a 51-42 halftime lead.

Williams finished with 20 points, and James had 10. James swatted away many Trojan field goal attempts with some very athletic blocked shots.

“We played as a team. We moved the ball. We hit our free throws and we played good D,” Williams said.

“We played hard. It was a hard-fought game. They have some good players,” James said. “They were a good team. We played good defense. Overall it was a good team win on senior night, and hopefully there’s many more.”

“I’m happy for our five seniors (Hyland Burton and Terrance King are the others). Those three are a big three for us,” Kennedy coach Mark Komlanc said. “When they play well together, we are at our best, there’s no doubt about it. It’s a matter of getting everybody to mesh with them. Tonight, it worked really well.”

The teams played even for the first half of the third quarter and the score was, 62-52, JFK. Trinity ended the quarter on a 9-3 run, closing the gap to four. The score was 65-61, Eagles, at the end of three.

Kennedy pushed the lead to eight with 2:30 left in the game. Suddenly, the Trojans went on another 9-2 run and JFK had a 1-point lead at 86-85 with 30 seconds to go. Kennedy hit a free throw for a two-point lead. With 0.5 seconds left in regulation, Carmen Fini, who finished with 45 points, made a strong move underneath to tie it up, 87-87.

It was on to overtime where Komlanc put the ball in the hands of the “big three.” The trio combined to score 12 of JFK’s 13 overtime points. The game was never in doubt in OT as Trinity failed to score until the final moments.

” It was a fun high school basketball game. We fought. We got up. We went down. In the end, they just had a little bit more than us,” Trinity coach Chad Radke said.

“We’re talented. We had very good ball movement tonight. We’ve focused on offense in practice and it paid off tonight,” Komlanc said. “We’ll be busy in the next 14 days with six games in that span.

“Now is winning time. This is when we turned it on last year. We’re prepping for the tournament. Now is the time to turn it on.”

Trinity made the trip from Cleveland. Kennedy will travel there for a rematch next Thursday.

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