Winston-Salem Prep clamps down on Toomey
Aaron Toomey might not be the quickest player around, but the 6-1 point guard for Bishop McGuinness can really enforce his will on the court.
That’s why Winston-Salem Prep decided at halftime tonight that if McGuinness was going to win, it wouldn’t be by the hands of Toomey.
And so Prep trapped, banged, grabbed and generally frustrated Toomey into a technical foul. Marlon Staton, Prep’s stocky defensive specialist, hounded Toomey, who scored 19 in the first half and only five in the second half during Prep’s 71-48 Northwest 2-A/1-A win.
Prep got in foul trouble in the process — Anthony Thomas, the star 6-8 wing for the Phoenix, fouled out a minute into the fourth quarter with 24 points. But Prep’s defensive point was made. McGuinness doesn’t have quite the level of talent around Toomey as it did during last year’s state championship run.
“The bottom line to him — and don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a great player — but the bottom line is keep him off the free throw line,” Coach Andre Gould of Prep said of Toomey.
“We have to stop reaching a grabbing. Like I told our guys, if he’s going to be tough we have to be tough too. We can’t back down because the referees call it; we are going to still body him. If he’s pushing on us, we have to push back at him. We can’t allow him to go wherever he wants to go because we are fearful that they will call something on us.”
Prep has not been as overpowering in general as many thought it would be, but I still think the Phoenix are right on course to win their second Class 1-A state title in three seasons.
The Phoenix are playing better than they did in the Frank Spencer Holiday Classic, when they finished as the runner-up to Reagan. I saw a little more teamwork tonight.
]The fact is, they are going to have a huge length advantage — and probably an athletic advantage as well — on any 1-A team in the state. If they use those advantages on defense and the offensive boards the way they did tonight, they will be extremely difficult to knock out.
McGuinness, on the other hand, is a far better team than I thought it would be this season.
“The games like this when you play an athletic team like that you get exposed when you don’t do little things well,” Coach Josh Thompson of McGuinness said. “We didn’t box out great, we got trapped a little. From here on out we have to use this as a learning experience and get better. We hope to play (Prep) again and hopefully we can make it a close game by taking care of the little things. We didn’t do that tonight and they took care of business on their end.”