Oran gets jump on Scott City, triumphs 58-41

SCOTT CITY, Mo. -- By the time the Scott City Rams woke up, it was too late.

Oran made its first five shots and scored 11 straight points to open the game and Scott City couldn't recover as the Eagles improved to 3-1 with a 58-41 victory Friday night.

It was the second straight game that the Rams (0-2) got off to a terrible start. Scott City spotted St. Vincent an 11-2 lead Tuesday.

Oran came out aggressively, while Scott City looked timid. The Eagles turned four early turnovers into nine points. Scott City couldn't get into its offense and Oran didn't need to as it scored in transition.

"We came out with the jitters again," said first-year coach Kerry Thompson. "I think it's just our youth.

"But you can't keep spotting a team 10 or 12 points. It puts you in a scramble and you've got to adjust your gameplan after the first two minutes of the game."

Scott City managed to make a game of it, climbing back to within four points near the end of the second quarter and again near the end of the third quarter as Oran got a little sloppy with the basketball. Oran led 29-22 at halftime.

"We let our guard down a little bit after we got off to the lead," Oran coach Mitch Wood said. "We had about four trips there where we had the wrong people shooting it."

But the Eagles finished the third quarter on a 9-3 run to lead 40-31 and never looked back.

Oran continued a trend of playing good defense. The Eagles have allowed just one team, Twin Rivers, to score more than 50 points this year. They haven't allowed any of their other three opponents to score more than 43 points.

"We feel that if we keep giving up 45 points a game, we'll win some ballgames," Wood said. "We're a better offensive team than we showed tonight and you could tell we haven't played in a week. But the effort was there and we played hard."

Wood's son, Ryne Wood -- who scored 13 points and made three 3-pointers -- wasn't at all satisfied with the performance.

"We played OK, I guess," he said. "We slacked off on defense a couple times, there in the first quarter and in the third quarter. We take pride in our defense and we didn't do as well as we could've."

Oran's Nathan Seyer scored a game-high 17 points. Patrick Friga added 10.

Chris Bradshaw led Scott City with 10 points.

Overall, the game was sloppy.

Scott City turned the ball over 22 times, while Oran had 19 turnovers. There were 22 fouls called on each team. The Rams made just 12 of their 27 free throws.