The Horizon Christian Hawks men’s basketball team has made it a point of playing up in competition the last two years and the start of this season is no exception. On Tuesday night (Dec. 14) the Hawks welcomed the 5A Marist Spartans to Hawk Country and quickly dispatched them back to Eugene with a 75-48 drubbing.
It was the second game in three days Horizon Christian faced an opponent at that elite level, after taking care of Mountain View, WA on Saturday night in Vancouver, 59-46. These games have not only helped the Hawks prepare for the elite competition they will face later this month at the Les Schwab Invitational, it also makes them battle tested when West Valley league play begins, as Junior point guard Jordan Tebbutt attests.
“I think it will make it easier in league (having) already played strong teams”, says Tebbutt.
Tebbutt is settling into his new position as the Hawks floor general quite nicely, getting the Hawks into rhythm against Marist right out of the gate. The junior drove to the basket strong getting the first points with a little harm and knocking in his free throw for the three point play to put the Hawks in front to stay at 3-0.
Horizon Christian increased the lead when Tebbutt hooked up with senior post Andrew Batiuk inside to make it 5-2. Moments later, sophomore wing, Michael Loomis knocked in one of his patented three balls to stake the Hawks to a 10-4 lead.
But Marist did their best to stay close early as junior guard Willy Malos bombed away from deep, leading the Spartans with 23 points.
That was not near enough to keep up with the Hawks as the Tebbutt-Batiuk connection was just too strong for the visiting Spartans. Batiuk tossed in a game high 29 points to go along with five boards.
Meanwhile Tebbutt added 17 points and dished out five assists, and had one steal in the second quarter that he took the other way for an all business like dunk at the other end.
The Spartans got to within six points at the end of the first quarter, but the Hawks answered with a 9-0 run midway through the second quarter to take a double digit lead. After that, Marist couldn’t cut the margin below 12 points the rest of the night.
The loss dropped Marist to 1-2 on the young season. While the top ranked Hawks improved to 3-0. Horizon Christian will have the rest of the week off to prepare for the North Marion tournament next week December 20-22. Then the Hawks will begin play in the LSI on December 26th.
While Horizon Christian has won its first three games by an average of 25 points a game, Head Coach Dave Brown says there is still work to do.
“We’ve got a lot of room for improvement especially (on) defense”, he stated.
And with a lot of new faces on the roster with a huge sophomore class there is still some work to do with the chemical elements of the team.
“I don’t think we’ll really be at our best until midway through the league (season)”, added Brown.
West Valley League Scores (Tuesday 12/14/10)
HORIZON CHRISTIAN (TUAL) 75 Marist 48
DAYTON 86 Siletz Valley 56
GERVAIS 40 Faith Bible 30
Country Christian 72 WESTSIDE CHRISTIAN 67
Amity 48 GASTON 46
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