Kapaun boys’ 47-point half overwhelms Derby

The pride of Derby basketball, its “havoc” defense, is designed to put its opponents through the grinder for 32 minutes.

Rarely do opponents turn the havoc against Derby like the Kapaun Mount Carmel boys did on Monday night, as the Crusaders hung 47 points in a frenetic first half and held on for a 76-67 victory to improve to 8-1 on the season.

“That defense is designed to wear us out and it wore us out,” Kapaun coach John Cherne said. “It took every last ounce we had to close that one out.”

Consider it a luxury for putting on a clinic in the opening 16 minutes, as Kapaun dismantled Derby’s full-court press and dominated the game in transition from the opening whistle.

Before two minutes had ticked off the clock, Kapaun already held a 10-5 advantage. After six minutes, Kapaun led 21-10. The Crusaders finished with 25 points in the first quarter, scoring in every which way.

When Derby missed, Kapaun would press the issue with long passes over the top of Derby’s retreating defense that were routinely turned into layups at the other end. Even on Derby makes, Kapaun inbounded the ball so quickly that it scored at the other end five seconds after the ball went through the net for Derby.

“Kapaun was, without question, the harder-playing team early on,” Derby coach Brett Flory said. “They did a great job of attacking and getting behind us. When you get down by 20 against a good team on the road, you’re probably not coming all the way back often.”

While the trio of Thomas Wells, Chris Meitzner and Mitchell Woodward receive much of the acclaim for the City League-leading Crusaders, on Monday night it was the play of J.T. Bell and Mark Hutton that helped them prevail.

Bell scored a season-high 19 points and even joined in on the three-point party in the process, while Hutton added 13. Meitzner scored 15, while Wells (11) and Woodward (five) were held under their averages.

“We just play together so well,” Bell said. “That’s a big part of it. I had a lot of good passes from my teammates tonight and I was playing hard. Tonight was just my night scoring.”

Meitzner said once Kapaun sensed Derby’s vulnerability in transition, the five players on the court knew to either be leaking out or be the one looking down the court for the throw-ahead pass.

After building a 25-12 lead after the first quarter, Kapaun followed that up another dominant quarter and took a 47-27 advantage into the locker room. For reference, Derby held McPherson to 46 points for the entire game of its season-opening win.

“We were just feeding off each other,” Meitzner said. “We were running on them and they weren’t really getting back on D, so we were taking advantage of that.”

But it did come at a cost.

Kapaun’s pace slowed considerably in the second half, which was partly due to fatigue but also due to foul trouble to Wells and a minor injury to Woodward. That took away two of Kapaun’s biggest weapons for a large portion of the second half, as Derby slowly worked to whittle down the lead.

Derby’s Nyjee Wright was the best player on the court on Monday, as no one on Kapaun could stay in front of him when he decided he wanted to venture to the rim. The Derby senior would put on a dazzling performance, scoring a season-high 32 points.

The problem, for Derby, was that for every Wright bucket, it was giving one up on the other end.

That’s not the solution for knocking down a 22-point deficit. But Derby would cut the Kapaun lead to 70-61 with 2:48 remaining and have one possession that could have put another dent in the deficit, but the three-point shot missed and Kapaun would hit enough free throws down the stretch to preserve the victory.

“We had this coming,” Flory said of his team. “We didn’t play great against Salina South and we got away with it. Tonight you go on the road against maybe the best team in 5A on their home court and they exposed it. And we needed that to happen. It was painful and it was ugly, but we needed that to happen. Hopefully we can regroup and grow from this.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2017 at 11:09 PM with the headline "Kapaun boys’ 47-point half overwhelms Derby."