The Crimson’s offense and defense combined to dominate the J-town Chargers , 79-49.  The Crimsons relied on their dominant defense to hold the Chargers to a very mediocre first half while they ran the score up.

At the end of the first half the score was 45-19 which was partially due to the no fear style of play Manual used when charging to the basket.  Eric Niemann (12, #33) and Steven Gordon (12, #21) worked the boards efficiently and got to the line.

“We played really well, we played hard came out here tonight and jumped on top of them,” Gordon said, “Our offense executed really good ball movement and our defense locked them up, which led to the blowout.”

Manual focused on their ball movement and spacing  which tried out the chargers defense and made sure that there was always an open man for the jump shot.

“These guys really like playing together and working with each other,” Head Coach Jimmy Just said, “The key for our offense is keeping our spacing on offense so we can make sure we can run our style of offense.”

The Crimson defense was menacing against the Chargers offense. Niemann and Gordon picked off passes along the perimeter while players such as Noah Hawkins (10, #42) and Coleman Powell (12, #44) blocked shots and made it almost impossible for J-town to drive to the rim.

“They were an undersized team so we could get in there and post up pretty easily”, Powell said, “I got a few easy points of rebounds because of my size and that helped the team out.”

The one flaw with Manual’s game tonight was the start of the second half.  After halftime the offense fell into a slump while the defense allowed a few open shots allowing J-Town to go on a small run.

“We need to work on not having that little dip late in the game,” Powell said, “We need to stay focused so we don’t have to play catch up and can finish strong.”

“We talk about that in practice and work to on different kind of stretches in games,” just said, “We need to stay focused for the 4th quarter.”

Manual will travel to Fairdale on Saturday December 12th; tipoff is at 3:30 p.m.