FRANKLIN — Andy McCarthy is enjoying his Fenwick High School boys basketball team’s early-season surge.
Having two — extremely tall — forces inside the paint has a lot to do with it.
Eddie Ferraro knocked down four second-half 3-pointers and scored a team-high 14 points, Carrson Sova added 11 and the Fenwick Falcons stormed out of the halftime break on their way to a 58-36 Greater Catholic League Coed victory over the visiting Badin Rams on Tuesday night.
“We talked at the beginning of the season about having these bigs,” McCarthy said of seniors Sova and Bailey Temming. “The best thing about it is that they’re athletic and mobile. They’re skilled. We will trust them to do just about everything.”
Temming turned in five points, seven rebounds and six assists, but everything Fenwick did on offense revolved around the 6-foot-10 center — who is averaging 17.3 points and 9.3 rebounds a game.
“I told him tonight that any college coach who watched this game is going to know how he affected it even without scoring,” McCarthy said.
The Falcons (4-0, 2-0 GCL Coed) have now won four in a row against the Rams and are off to their best start since the 2017-2018 season when they also began 4-0.
“Playing with this team and this coach — it’s so special,” said Ferraro, a junior. “It was so loud in here tonight. Our teammates are so good, and that makes my job easy sometimes. All I’m here to do is just do my job — play defense, knock down shots and win games.”
McCarthy took over at Fenwick during the offseason when Mike Holweger left to lead the Springboro girls basketball team. The Falcons, on the other hand, spoiled first-year Badin coach CJ Fleming’s debut.
“Our staff did a good job of talking things through,” Fleming said. “We did some good things in the first half, but our lapses are killing us. Right now, we’ve got to get better. It’s as simple as that.
“It’s about these guys. It’s about what they do. I want them to be successful,” Fleming added. “First game, yeah, but it’s about these guys.”
Fenwick led 8-6 after a first quarter of nonstop action. Badin boasted a slight edge of momentum throughout the second quarter and took an 18-16 lead into the half.
“Defensively, we were a little bit tougher,” Fleming said of his team’s performance in the first two quarters. “Offensively, I don’t think either half we were ourselves.
“We talked about it with the guys. We lost it in the first minute of the third quarter,” Fleming added. “We went from up two to down seven or eight in the blink of an eye. A lot of stuff to clean up. I thought we did some good things in the first half when we had the lead.”
The Rams (0-1, 0-1 GCL Coed) lost that lead when the Falcons stormed out of the third-quarter gate on a 10-0 run. Aidan Brown, who finished with nine points for Badin, halted Fenwick’s scoring spree with a 3-pointer roughly halfway through the third.
Cooper Ollis paced the Rams, who were outrebounded 30-20, with 14 points. Grant Wissman had seven rebounds for Badin.
“Andy does a good job over there. That’s a good ball team,” Fleming said of Fenwick, which fired 7 of 19 from 3-point range. “Their 1-2-2 zone that they press with is going to be effective with how long Sova and Temming are and how good their guards are.
“We turned the ball over a lot — a lot more in the second half than in the first half. But still a lot. … We’ve just got to get better. It’s as simple as that.”
Sova, who stands at 6-8, threw down a baseline dunk in the second quarter to get the Fenwick faithful on their feet. He finished with nine rebounds.
“We’ve got the best defense. I got beat a couple times, but our big guys clean it up inside — which is a great relief to have,” Ferraro said. “It’s great to have them down there. They impact the game in every little way. They’re so unselfish. That’s the best quality to have. They dish it out, but they can get it themselves.
“We weren’t ready as much as we should have been,” Ferraro added. “But we matched it. We had to go a step above. The refs aren’t going to call everything. This is a GCL game. You’ve got to power through it, and we went on a run to make it happen.”
UP NEXT
Both teams continue GCL Coed play on the road Friday night. Badin takes on Carroll, while Fenwick faces to Alter.
