Union Local’s Beezer Porter takes a jump shot Thursday night in Connorville against Buckeye Local.

CONNORVILLE — Union Local head coach Zach Delman never wants to diminish the overall goal, which is to win.

As he stood outside of the Jets locker room Thursday evening after a 49-36 victory against homestanding Buckeye Local, Delman had trouble pinpointing a lot of positives beyond the end goal.

“We were a little bit out of routine (Thursday) and clearly we’re a group that likes being in routine,” Delman said. “There’s no school. We moved the game up a day. There’s no jayvee game. All things that are normal most of the time, but, quite simply, we have to get better. That’s what it boils down to and that’s what I told the kids.”

The win improves the Jets to 5-2 on the season. They’ll return from a few days off for Christmas on Tuesday to take on rival Barnesville as part of a basketball quadruple header, which also involves the girls teams.

“We’re always happy to win, but when you win by 13 and you go into the locker room feeling upset because you don’t feel like you played anywhere near the level you’re capable of it’s frustrating.”

Speaking of frustrated. Buckeye Local head coach Chris Heaton watched his club drop to 1-7 with a date with Alliance Marlington coming on Tuesday in the Todd Kalivoda Classic at Toronto High School.

“We continue to have too many long stretches without scoring and that continues to hurt us,” Heaton said.

Those stretches definitely hurt against the Jets. Union Local closed the first half by scoring the final nine and opened the third with the first eight in a stretch of time that covered almost six minutes of game action.

“Momentum is always big and closing the half well and opening the third well are two important factors we stress,” Delman said. “We got too careless with the ball at times though. It’s not that we’re not skilled, but we just get careless with the ball and you do that against some teams you’re not going to come out of it with a win.”

That aforementioned spurt by the Jets was fueled by senior guard Beezer Porter. He scored 11 of his 18 in that stretch of play.

It wasn’t until there was 4:50 to play in the third when the Panthers ended the drought.

“The second quarter killed us,” Heaton continued. “We missed too many layups, had some costly turnovers and then Porter got hot.”

The Panthers actually outscored Union Local in the fourth, but the hole was simply too deep. Porter had two more buckets and senior post Jared Miller, who finished with 10 in top support, also had a pair of second-chance baskets.

Buckeye Local did a good job of controlling seniors D.J. Butts and Carter Blake, but the Jets got eight points off the bench from both Easton Ditzler and Alex Moore.

The Panthers, meanwhile, were led by Dayne Carter, who scored 10. He had all eight of Buckeye’s points in the third. Gavyn Romanyak finished with nine rebounds to lead all players.