Cape boys’ basketball eliminated from state tournament
After a season of ups and downs, the Cape Henlopen boys’ basketball team picked the wrong night to play its sloppiest game of the year, tumbling out of the DIAA state tournament with an 82-48 first-round loss to Caravel Feb. 28 in Bear.
“We just weren’t locked in at all,” said coach Steve Re, whose Vikings committed 21 turnovers against the Buccaneers’ press defense. “It’s almost like we’d never seen a press before. Usually, when a team presses us, it puts us in an attacking position where we’re actually pretty good, but [Caravel’s] press rattled us, and it snowballed from there. In terms of effort, we’ve seen flashes of lack of effort through the season, but tonight was a consistent lack of effort, which you can’t have in the postseason.”
No. 24 Cape hung with No. 9 Caravel for a quarter, but the Bucs turned up the heat early in the second. Caravel’s frenetic full-court press forced six consecutive turnovers to open the period, igniting a 16-2 scoring run that put the Buccaneers in front 29-13 with 5:23 left in the first half. Cape sliced the margin to 13 at the half, but it never got any closer.
Junior guard Dominique Wyatt scored a game-high 22 points to pace Caravel (15-6), which shot 55% from the floor and held a 33-17 rebounding advantage. Senior wing John Clemmons and junior guard Miles White added 17 points apiece.
Cape (12-9) got 14 points from senior guard Tyrone Tolson and eight from junior big man Jack Schell.
