Oak Ridge boys basketball team sails into district semifinal

DELTA -- The Oak Ridge boys basketball team didn't know many specifics about its first-round opponent in the Class 1 District 2 tournament Monday.

The second-seeded Blue Jays faced bottom-seed McKinley Classical Leadership from St. Louis.

"We came out and we talked about making sure that we set the tempo early and just played our game," Oak Ridge coach Adam Stoneking said. "And that's what we did."

The Blue Jays scored the game's first nine points and never were threatened on their way to a 105-31 victory.

"It's unfair to those guys to have to travel two and a half hours away to a school they've never heard of, playing a team they've never heard of," Stoneking said, empathizing with overmatched McKinley. "It puts you in a bad situation. You wish it was more of a fair setting for them."

Oak Ridge opened a 30-point lead, which would have been big enough to force a running clock in the final quarter, with more than a minute left to play in the first quarter.

"We found guys for layups," Stoneking said. "We didn't take bad shots, so I was happy with that. We've got to do a little bit better job of blocking out against guys who are a little quicker than us. But other than that, I thought we played really well throughout most of the game."

Oak Ridge post players Kyle Rohde and Ryan Below, who finished with 12 and 21 points, regularly were fed the ball inside in the first half for one wide-open layup after another.

"I thought we did a good job of just making sure we do that against a man," Stoneking said. "We really looked to find somebody when people help, and if people helped, we found the person. Kyle and Ryan were getting a lot of easy baskets."

Senior Brett Thomas did most of the passing inside, finishing with 23 points and 12 assists. He and the rest of the Oak Ridge starters played only a few minutes in the second half before yielding to reserves.

Oak Ridge led 69-16 at halftime.

Ten Blue Jays scored against McKinley. Junior Jacob Light and freshman Jacob LeGrand also finished in double digits with 12 and 11 points respectively.

Oak Ridge will face No. 3 seed Delta in the semifinals 7:30 p.m. today. The Blue Jays won two meetings with Delta in the first month of the regular season.

McKinley 9 7 10 5 -- 31

Oak Ridge 36 33 23 13 -- 105

McKINLEY CLASSICAL LEADERSHIP (31) -- Crispus Jacobs 4, Daniel Dilworth 4, Stephen Wright 7, Datren Jones 2, Jeremiah Henderson 11. FG 13, FT 1-4, F 28. (3-pointers: Jacobs 1, Wright 1. Fouled out: none)

OAK RIDGE (105) -- Stephen Bolen 5, Caleb Elam 7, Lucas Rohde 5, Jacob Light 12, Ryan Below 21, Jacob LeGrand 11, Kyle Rohde 12, Ethan Seyer 1, Brett Thomas 23, Corvin Schoen 8. FG 38, FT 28-44, F 5. (3-pointers: L. Rohde 1. Fouled out: none)