WAYNESBORO – Junior guard Michael Young had a break-out performance on Friday night, and the Waynesboro varsity boys’ basketball team notched another double-digit win.
Young scored a team-high 19 points, including three three-point field goals, and the Indians beat the Boiling Springs Bubblers 65-45 in a Mid-Penn Colonial Division game.
Boiling Springs’ Trey Martin led all scorers with 25 points, but the Bubblers could not make up for a 23-4 deficit that Waynesboro built through the early part of the second quarter.
Tanyon Shaull scored eight points, followed by Jaylon Bean, Cooper Hough and Louie Lindsay with seven apiece.
Waynesboro shots 73 percent from two-point range (19 for 26) and won despite committing 20 turnovers. The Indians made up for the turnover hiccups by outrebounding Boiling Springs 28-11. Ryan Shaffer had eight of them, while Young had six boards.
“It really starts with our defense,” said Waynesboro coach Tom Hoffman, in what has become the oft-repeated theme of games. “It’s kind of become a calling card with this group. Our D leads to transition offense. We knew coming in we’d be able to score. For the most part, our scoring is a consistent thing. When we lock teams down, we can create separation pretty early in the game sometimes.”
Waynesboro has won by more than 10 points in 13 of its 14 wins.
“When we are in attack mode, we can be pretty hard to beat,” Hoffman said. “Guys were looking to get to the rim, and we were crashing the boards.
“Our guys were pretty consistent across the board. The issue is we need to continue to push ourselves. We still have to challenge ourselves. When it comes down to crunch times in games we need to be ready.”
The Indians (14-3) set the tone for the game early when Young fed Lindsay underneath for a layup for the game’s first points. Young made back-to-back layups and then followed up his own missed shot for an 8-0 lead. Lindsay made another layup to make it 10-0 with 3:18 left to play in the first quarter.
Shaffer and Shaull added to the layup parade to give Waynesboro a 14-4 lead after the first eight minutes.
The Indians continued to add to the lead, thanks in part to put-back buckets and more layups. It was 23-4 at the 6:11 mark of the second period and 39-10 at halftime.
Waynesboro, down to its last five games of the season, makes the short trip to Greencastle to play Greencastle-Antrim on Tuesday for a league contest.
