Hamilton County Reporter
The first weekend of Hoosier Crossroads Conference games saw some hard-fought contests, including one at the Tiger Den.
Fishers hosted Noblesville on Friday, and it was a fun battle between the two county rivals. The Millers stayed with the Tigers for the entire game before Fishers hung on for a 59-51 victory.
“The fun thing about this league is, you get all kinds of different and teams and great coaches,” said Tigers coach Matt Moore. “And tonight was the first step up for us to be where we need to be. You just got to take care of business. You got to win your home games and you got to steal some on the road.”
Fishers led 15-10 after the first quarter, with five different players scoring at least two points in that period. Alex Szilagyi had five points. Noblesville’s Alex Hunt also had five points in that quarter.
The Millers jumped ahead 18-17 early in the second period, but the Tigers reclaimed a 28-25 lead by halftime. Jordan Gadis had a great quarter for Noblesville with eight points, while Preston Roberts added seven. Meanwhile, Fishers’ Jeffrey Simmons was playing well under the basket, with six points.
Late in the third quarter, Roberts tied the game up at 39-39 with his third 3-pointer of the game. Bryce Williams answered back with a layin, and that allowed the Tigers to lead 41-39 at the end of the period.
Williams’ basket actually started an 8-0 run for Fishers. The Tigers opened the fourth quarter with a three-point play from Simmons, then Isaac Farah nailed a 3. Fishers was able to keep the lead around eight points for the remainder of the game; the Tigers went 11 of 13 from the free throw line in that period.
“I think all three games now, going into the end of the third quarter with a minute to go, it was a one-possession game,” said Moore. “And being in that position, our guys understood that if we get stops, we can get some runouts, we’re a pretty good free-throw shooting team. And once we extended that a little bit, we were able to space the floor and at that point, we’re making shots. I thought our guys did a good job of, when we took some shots that didn’t fall, we got back to who we are, of getting the ball back inside to Jeff.”
Simmons finished the game with 18 points, while Szilagyi had 17. Moore also gave credit to his players’ defensive efforts.
“Defensively, I thought Dominic Castellani was outstanding,” said Moore. “I thought Charlie Smith and Drew Turner were two guys that did a great job in their roles tonight and stepped in when they needed to. For us, we got the flexibility of having a lot of guys that can defend and handle the ball. Justin Long is a guy that does a lot of good things for us. Doesn’t maybe show up in the stat sheet all the time. He impacts the game.”
Gadis led the Millers with 14 points, while Hunt scored 13 and collected four rebounds. Roberts, who was 3-for-3 from 3-point range, finished with 10 points.
“I think we did a decent job,” said Noblesville coach John Peckinpaugh. “We still got a lot of work to do. We’re going to be a completely different team in January. We’re just going to stick with our process of how we’re going to try to get better, get good at what we want to be good at. And it’s going to take some time, but I think we took a step forward tonight. We’ll just keep getting after it.”
Fishers is unbeaten at 3-0 and will host Mount Vernon tonight. The Millers are 1-2 and return to their home floor tonight to take on Class 3A No. 8 Beech Grove.