[OSUBasketballJunkie]

link

1/17/06

All Dun, bar none, at OSU

Wolverines rout Vikings at Ohio State

COLUMBUS - From a showdown to a beat down, Villa Angela-St. Joseph and David Lighty would like to take a mulligan for what happened against Dayton Dunbar at Value City Arena.
The highly anticipated meeting of Lighty and the state-ranked Vikings vs. fellow OSU signee Daequan Cook and the state-ranked Wolverines was about as one-sided as a marquee matchup can get, and VASJ was not the side to be on Monday.
All good teams and good players have "one of those days" during the course of the season, but the Vikings and Lighty had theirs against the wrong team and the wrong star opponent. Cook scored a career-high 41 points to lead high-powered Dunbar to a 101-53 pounding of VASJ on the Buckeyes' home floor.
Cook, who also finished with 15 rebounds, five assists and three steals, scored 23 points in the first half as Dayton Dunbar bolted to a 48-21 halftime lead. Lighty was held to two points on 1 of 6 shooting from the field in the opening 16 minutes and finished the game with a season-low 10 points and four rebounds.
"It just wasn't our whole team's day," Lighty said. "We came out flat, they jumped on us, and we didn't fight through it. We never played like that before. We have to go back to work and play harder than we did today."
VASJ coach Dave Wojciechowski called Cook's performance "tremendous" and had high praise for the Wolverines as a whole. But like Lighty, he was disappointed with his team's overall effort, especially in a spotlight game they had been targeting since preseason.
"I think this is as low as you can get," Wojciechowski said. "In the history of the school, I don't remember a Vikings team ever getting beat by 50. We have some soul searching to do.
"We were outworked, outhustled, outmanned and overwhelmed early on, and we didn't respond at all. Their ability to play 94 feet and their athleticism maybe put some of our guys in a state of awe early on, and that is something we need to learn to fight through and show more heart and toughness."
A pair of Erich Leden 3-pointers in the first quarter kept VASJ in the game as the Wolverines led, 14-13, late in the quarter. Dunbar went on to score the final nine points of the first quarter and the first four of the second to complete a 13-0 run and rush out to a 27-13 advantage with 6:45 left in the first half.
The Vikings broke the long drought with a basket by sophomore Ashen Ward - who led VASJ with 14 points - but could only manage three Darryl Rushton baskets the rest of the quarter. They went to the locker room trailing by 27 when Cook punctuated his big first half with a triple from the corner at the buzzer.
VASJ (8-3) turned the ball over nine times and was outrebounded, 19-12, in the nightmare first half.
Dunbar (10-2) and Cook never let up, ballooning the lead out to 74-38 behind a couple of highlight reel dunks from the 6-foot-4 senior and relentless transition baskets and offensive putbacks.
"They were like sharks in bloody water out there, and we didn't have an answer," Wojciechowski said. "I feel bad for our whole group because we didn't compete tonight, but they put that on themselves. It is all about effort, and ours was awful. I felt like we were prepared coming in. We just didn't do anything well. It was terrible."
Cook was just the opposite. The silky smooth shooting guard put on quite a display in front of his future coach, Thad Matta, who sat anonymously in the stands behind the scorer's table. Cook hit 17 of 29 shots and nearly brought the house down in the second half when he tried a LeBron James-like through the legs dunk. He just missed the slam, banging it off the back of the rim. But as the whole afternoon went for the Vikings, Cook got the rebound and laid the ball in for two more points.
Cook said he didn't talk to Lighty much during the game, and that he was focused on winning and his own performance more than the much talked-about matchup with his soon-to-be teammate.
"Between the lines, I have no friends," Cook said. "I'll be friends with someone all day off the court, but on it, I am trying to win. This was a great atmosphere, and I am looking forward to playing here next year. It's should be exciting."
Junior center Aaron Pogue had 11 points and seven rebounds and Mark Anderson contributed 15 points and nine rebounds for the Wolverines.
Junior Maurice Haynes had seven points and eight rebounds for VASJ.