Cape boys’ basketball dominates Polytech
Coming into the 2018-19 campaign, Cape boys’ basketball coach Steve Re saw outside shooting as a major strength for his young Vikings.
“We have multiple guys who can shoot the ball,” Re said during a November interview. “We have guys who can spray it.”
Two games into the season, the Vikings have made him look like Nostradamus.
Cape hit 10 of 23 three-point tries and used a big second-quarter surge to breeze past host Polytech 63-40 on Dec. 11 in Woodside.
Junior guard Kris Rushin scored 13 points on 5-for-6 shooting to pace the Vikings (2-0, 2-0 Henlopen North), knocking down a pair of threes along the way. Sophomore guard Ja’Vaughn Burton added 12 points and went 4-for-6 from long range, while junior wing Sh’Kai Chandler contributed 10 points, six rebounds and three steals.
Cape, which also got two three-pointers from sophomore forward Ethan Pires and one apiece from senior guard Scottie Dishman and junior guard Collin Mallet, has gone a gaudy 18-for-51 (35 percent) from beyond the arc through two games.
Re is happy to see his team let it fly as long as the Vikings get quality looks.
“I don’t mind those shots as long as they’re coming within the flow [of the offense],” Re said. “We’re getting more comfortable with knowing when to shoot the three, knowing when we have a good three-point shot, [and] understanding good floor spacing. When we’re moving the ball and doing it the right way, we have a lot of guys who can knock ‘em down.”
Cape blew the game open with a 19-4 run in the second quarter, going up 36-17 on a corner three from Rushin a minute before halftime. Rushin poured in eight points during the spurt, while Pires connected on two threes in a 45-second span.
Up 39-20 at intermission, the Vikings were never challenged in the second half.
Pires finished with eight points, 13 rebounds and two assists for Cape, which shot a solid 42 percent from the floor on the night and outmuscled Polytech 36-26 on the boards. The Vikings also got eight points from junior guard Jo Jo Kirby, while Dishman added five points, four assists and two blocks. Mallet chipped in with three points on a fourth-quarter trifecta, the first of his career, while freshman guard Kay’von Allen and senior forward Anthony Smith notched two points each.
Senior wing Brandin Obidike netted a game-high 16 points for Polytech (0-3, 0-3 Henlopen North), which hit just 28 percent of its field goal tries and committed 16 turnovers against a stout Cape defense.
Re lauded his team’s effort on the defensive end.
“Once we got our legs under us, I thought our team defense was really good,” Re said. “We worked last week on getting more physical and communicating better defensively with our rotations. We got more physical with our on-ball defense and with our rebounding. The rebounding was a whole lot better tonight, and everyone got in on it.”
The Vikings return to action Friday, Dec. 14, when they host Caesar Rodney.
