ELY- With both teams coming off big wins during the holiday break and both sporting winning records, fans were anticipating a heated battle when North Woods and Ely renewed their cross-county rivalry on Friday on the hardwoods at Memorial High School.
Instead, what they got was an Ely rout, as the Timberwolves ran roughshod over the visitors in an 80-53 blowout, the biggest Ely win over the Grizzlies since the 2012-13 season.
On a night when Wolves’ senior Caid Chittum scored the 1,000th point of his career, Ely could do no wrong and the Grizzlies could do little right. North Woods got off on the right foot when Andrew Hartway answered a deuce by Chittum by canning a three-ball for a 3-2 Grizzlies’ lead. But Ely’s Jack Davies countered with a basket for the Wolves, and they never trailed again. Ely went up by double digits at 22-12 when Drew Johnson scored a bucket and one at the 8:41 mark, and Davies sent the Wolves into halftime with a buzzer-beating three-ball from way beyond the arc and a 47-28 lead.
Davies was on fire in the first half, scoring 23 points and draining five treys on the way to a game-high 29 points.
North Woods fared no better in the second half, as the hot-shooting Wolves nailed 51 percent of their shots while the Grizzlies hit on only 37 percent of theirs.
North Woods Head Coach Andrew Jugovich attributed Ely’s dominance to their use of a box-and-one defense to neutralize the Grizzlies’ leading scorer, rebounder, and passer Louie Panichi. Considered a junk defense when it was first introduced to the game a century ago, coaches today routinely employ the box-and-one to foil an opponent’s top player, and it worked to perfection against Panichi, who scored just one point and took only four shots in the game.
“When you have a player like that and they shut him down by playing a box-and-one, it’s up to the next man, and that’s where our troubles really started,” Jugovich said. “We weren’t doing our game plan, and that was to move the ball around, break down their defense and get to the middle.”
Ely Head Coach Tom McDonald also gave kudos to the team’s defense.
“I thought our defense subdued them pretty well,” he said. “We played really well defensively.”
Chittum came into the game needing 11 points to hit the 1,000-point mark and ended up with 25. Drew Johnson had a solid all-around game with 15 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists.
“I give them credit,” Jugovich said. “They shot the lights out, over 50 percent from three and 50 percent from two, and when they’re shooting that good, especially in Ely, a hard place to play, it’s going to be hard to win. They ran their game plan, executed it perfectly, and our boys and myself weren’t able to adjust to it.”
For the Grizzlies, Talen Jarshaw led the way with 19 points, and Kalvyn Benner hit for 14.