East boys basketball holds off Carney, Carroll

Bishop Carroll coach Lonnie Lollar didn’t mince words when it came to his game plan Friday night against East.

“We needed to stop Xavier Kelly,” Lollar said. “Try to do anything you can to stop big old, hulking No. 22 in the middle, because he’s stronger and can jump higher than anyone in the entire City League, and you have to help down on that guy or he’ll beat you.”

Carroll’s plan almost worked in a 50-48 loss, but it was Kelly’s recognition of the double and triple teams that seemed to propel East, kicking the ball out to the open man as East hit five three-pointers and an array of mid-range jumpers to hold on for the win.

“Credit Xavier because he does an outstanding job of recognizing the double and triple teams and skipping the ball out,” East coach Joe Jackson said. “He’s just such an unselfish player, he’s getting guys open looks when that happens. We’re going to see a lot of that against him this year, so we need to understand that right now. We still have a lot of things to improve on.”

East (2-0, 2-0 City League) went back and forth with Carroll (2-1, 2-1) in the first half as the two teams traded leads 12 times before a pair of free throws by Kelly put the Aces up 24-22 at halftime.

Kelly (6-foot-6) finished with six points, six rebounds and two blocks.

“We don’t have a ton of offensive sets in,” Jackson said. “And tonight, we didn’t execute one.”

East got some separation in the third quarter thanks to senior Raymond O’Day, a role player on last year’s championship team. The 6-foot-2 guard/forward hit a jumper to open the second half, then closed out the third quarter with another long jumper and a three-pointer for a 41-32 lead that was part of an 8-0 East run.

“We gave up too many open threes, and credit (Jackson) because he studies and works his craft so well,” Lollar said. “They could see us sagging in on Xavier and kicked the ball out at the right times. What really hurt us was that run at the end of the third quarter that put us in a big hole, but hats off to East ... they’re the defending City League and state champions and we fought with them tonight, but we’re just not there yet.”

Carney, a senior guard, almost shot Carroll to the victory in the third quarter, scoring 10 of his game-high 23 points. His back-to-back three-pointers cut East’s lead to 48-45, and Carroll had two chances to tie it, finally missing on an Eric Scharping three-pointer with 10 seconds left. Carney hit another three to cut the Aces’ lead to two, but all the Eagles could manage was a full-court heave at the buzzer.

“We came out firing, doing pretty good defensively,” Carney said. “We just needed one or two more possessions. I’d hit a couple of shots right before (Scharping’s miss) so they were really focused on me not getting the ball. We still got the shot we wanted, because Eric is a good shooter and got a good look.”

Michael McKinney added 10 points for East. Scharping finished with 12 for Carroll.

“We’re struggling with running our offense right now,” O’Day said. “It’s frustrating, but we just need to be patient and get into our groove. (Carroll) came out really intense, really aggressive and we just had to fight through it.”

This story was originally published December 11, 2015 at 11:13 PM with the headline "East boys basketball holds off Carney, Carroll."