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WHEELING - When it comes to Senior Night, a school always wants to make it memorable for its upperclassmen. For the Linsly boys basketball team, it was made even more special during its game against Parkersburg.
After a tightly contested first quarter, the Cadets scored 16 of the first 18 points in the second and never looked back en route to a 89-54 victory over the Big Reds Tuesday night at Stifel Field House.
The victory also set the record for most in a regular season with 21.
"I'm really proud of them for that. That was one of their goals and I told them that no one can take away from you," Linsly coach Dave Wojcik said about the accomplishment. "You guys raised the bar and set the standard. Now every other team has to shoot for that."
It was early in the season where Wojcik saw the potential in his squad. He made sure to tell the Cadets the potential they had and what they must do to accomplish the feat.
"I thought we could be pretty good after our fourth game," Wojcik said. "I told them that after that. I reminded them that as long as we stay focused, disciplined and hold each other accountable, you can reach that goal and be very, very good. They've done that. They've done everything I've asked them to do and they've reached that goal. Now the goal is to win the next game. Then we will worry about South Carolina and try to defend that when we go down there this weekend."
The Cadets started their strong second quarter with two buckets by Will Taylor followed by two from Rueben Salazar. D'arrae Goodwin scored the final six points of the 16-2 run as the score read 36-18 with 1:30 remaining until halftime.
"I think our conditioning wears teams down a bit," Wojcik said. "Our goal on senior night is we don't want to go out with a loss. We haven't had that yet and hopefully we continue that moving forward."
Four players scored in double figures for the Cadets with both Goodwin and Salazar tallying 18 points. Goodwin earned all of his points in the first half. Luka Kecman tallied 12 points and Taylor bucketed 10.
For the Big Reds, Nate Rodriguez netted a team-high 17 points while Quintin Wilson fought for 11.
Rodriguez scored 12 points in the first quarter keeping Parkersburg within reach of Linsly. As the score read 14-4 with 4:18 left in the first after a Daniel Farin 3-pointer, Rodriguez put the team on his back and scored eight points in the closing minutes to make the score 20-16 at the end of the first quarter.
"Nate actually is the backbone of our team." Parkersburg coach Phil Wilson said. "Once he started to double team him to take the ball out of his hands. Now we got to get the other players to step up. We're all freshmen and sophomores, really. Nate is a junior, so he will be back next year. So we can build some stuff around him and take some of that pressure off. I think we will be fine moving forward."
As for Linsly's seniors, Farin, Kecman, Jonah Vaysbakh and Zain Custovic, their time may be winding down at Linsly, but Wojcik believes there's still a lot of basketball in their future.
"I think all of those guys are going to play after high school. It's just a matter of where," Wojcik said. "That's why they come. Kids want to come here and get better. It's my goal to get them to play collegiately after high school."