Christopher Dock takes care of Calvary Baptist
Christopher Dock was never in much peril as it took on Calvary Baptist Monday night but it responded well when it faced a small stretch of adversity towards the end of the second quarter.
The Pioneers responded with a huge third quarter led by Jared Exler, who had 15 points in the frame, to help springboard Dock to the 67-43 win.
“We were getting on the boards and guys were flying down the court,” Dock coach Mike Fergus said. “They didn’t have real good floor balance and we took advantage of that. We had 20 assists tonight which was a season high for us so that was really nice to see us sharing the ball.”
Deins Bergis helped get Dock off to the quick start it was looking for. The junior scored seven of his 21 points in the opening quarter with all three of his made field goals resulting in and-one attempts.
Although it was Exler who finished with the game high 27 points, Bergis was the best player on the court for the pioneers as he hit the boards hard and distributed the ball offensively.
“He was all over the boards, flying up and down the court, he was making nice passes, that was his best game of the year,” Fergus said of Bergis.
In the second quarter Dock ran into a bit of foul and got into the bonus early. Holding as much as a 13-point lead at the 5:11 mark in the second the Pioneer lead was cut to two. Dock responded by closing out the quarter strong taking a nine point lead into half and then came out of halftime on fire hitting Calvary with an 11-0 run in just less than two minutes to open the half.
“We hit a three in transition and we just hit a run,” Fergus said. “We talked at halftime about trying to be a little more disciplined defensively not pressing as much, playing a little bit more half-court solid defense. All those turnovers came with in our half court defense.”
Defensively Dock eventually figured out how to shutdown the one-dimensional offense of Calvary. The Warriors kept trying to dribble drive on Dock but it was ready for it. The Pioneers also did a good job of defending Calvary center Donald Miller who posed a big threat in the paint.
“We wanted to keep the ball out of the post, [Miller] is a pretty good player,” Fergus said. “We wanted to make sure we had two guys on him all the time. We wanted for them to prove they could hit outside shots.”
Dock has two regular season games remaining with a trip to the Bicentennial Athletic League playoffs looming after that. As it stands the Pioneers are likely a fringe team to make the district playoffs so a strong finish to the season is crucial.
