PITTSBORO — Jarod Stevenson couldn’t help but crack a smile through his facemask.
Sometimes, that’s all you can do.
Cummings drained 11 shots from behind the arc in its 87-62 men’s basketball victory over the Seaforth Hawks last Tuesday on a night where the Cavaliers were on fire from all around the court.
“That was tough,” Stevenson, the Hawks’ first-year head coach, said following the loss. “I told the guys that I’d rather them shoot a 3 than have them shoot a layup, but … even though I’m saying, ‘Let them shoot the 3,’ I still want your hand to be up.”
The Hawks’ defensive strategy — forcing Cummings to settle for 3-pointers — nearly worked.
Out of 61 total shots taken by the Cavaliers, 30 of them were 3-pointers, while the other 31 were from inside the arc, striking a near-perfect balance.
The problem for Seaforth, however, was that Cummings hit its 3-pointers at a 36% clip, a solid percentage that should have been even higher had it not been negatively impacted by a few unimportant late-game heaves in garbage time.
From two-point range, the Cavaliers were even more dangerous, shooting an impressive 71% from the field.
After hitting just two triples in the opening period, the Cavaliers unloaded their arsenal in the second quarter, knocking down five of them to push their lead to 12 points, 41-29, at the halftime break.
Cummings senior shooting guard Zion Crawley (18 points) hit four of them in the second period, including a stretch where three out of four Cavaliers possessions ended with a Crawley 3-pointer, lasting only a little over a minute of game time.
In short, Crawley — and essentially every other member of the Cavaliers — was heating up. And the Hawks struggled to defend him.
“Again, it was where we didn’t really put our hand up, we just stood there and watched them shoot it,” Stevenson said. “We’re taking baby steps to get better as the season goes along and hopefully they learn from this game. … It’s still a learning process.”
Despite the Hawks’ inability to guard the 3-pointer and the frustration of seeing shot-after-shot fall for the Cavaliers in the second quarter, Seaforth held strong.
Midway through the third quarter, Hawks sophomore Chris Walker drove and scored at the hoop to cut their deficit to single digits, 45-36.
But as became customary throughout the game, Cummings freshman Johnniyus Sharpe scored back-to-back layups to push the Cavs’ lead right back to 13 points, killing any sort of momentum the Walker bucket had given the Hawks.
In fact, the Cavaliers made a night out of stunting the Hawks’ momentum any time it appeared that it was trending upwards.
A few minutes later, still in the third quarter, Seaforth’s standout sophomore forward Jarin Stevenson drained one of his three 3-pointers to make it a 10-point game and get the crowd riled up in the Hawks’ favor.
But less than 10 seconds later, Crawley received a quick pass from Sharpe in transition, sliced along the baseline and finished an and-one layup as he fought through contact from Walker, causing him to flex toward his own bench in celebration.
Yet again, the momentum was gone before it even had a chance to bloom.
“(The momentum) was definitely important,” Jarod Stevenson said. “We’d hit a three, then they’d hit a three.”
Even with the wonky momentum factor, the Hawks competed with the Cavaliers for nearly three quarters, but after Crawley’s old-fashioned 3-point play, Cummings began to run away with it.
The Cavaliers went on a 15-2 run to increase their lead to 23 points late in the third quarter, 66-43, punctuated by a 3-pointer from sophomore Jakari Dobbins, who then stole the ensuing inbound pass and scored again in the paint off of an offensive rebound.
By the end of the third quarter, Cummings had a 66-45 lead and, with just 8 minutes remaining in the game, Seaforth didn’t have a comeback left in the tank.
The Hawks’ first conference game in program history may not have yielded the results they were hoping for as the team fell to 1-5 on the season following the loss, but for Jarod Stevenson, there were plenty of positives to take away.
And it all starts with the monumental play of his son, Jarin Stevenson, who scored 30 points (on 60% shooting), contributing nearly half of his team’s total scoring. He also added 12 rebounds in a double-double effort while compiling four blocks on the defensive end, the only Hawk to put one on the stat sheet.
“Today was a big improvement for him,” Jarod Stevenson said of Jarin. “I felt the first couple of games, he sort of let the other team take him out of the game where he wasn’t as aggressive as he should be.”
Jarin Stevenson — who has already received offers from both UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State from his play as a freshman at Northwood and travel basketball tournaments over the summer — is a sophomore that’s slowly but surely learning how to become a better leader, better teammate and better player, his coach said.
He’s starting to become comfortable in his new role after coming from a team last season stacked with senior leaders and underclassmen talent.
“That was one of the reasons why we came here (to Seaforth), because we knew the level of talent would be a little bit different where he’d have to have more responsibility,” Jarod Stevenson said. “So I thought, today, he took on more responsibility than he did in the first couple of games.”
“I just knew what I had to do (tonight),” Jarin Stevenson added. “And in order for it to be a close game, I knew I had to go off and set the tone from the beginning.”
He undoubtedly set the tone early on when he drove along the baseline and slammed home an and-one dunk early in the second quarter as the crowd went ballistic.
Whether it’s momentum-swinging dunks, contested 3-pointers or humiliating blocks, Jarin Stevenson can do it all.
But as exciting as his big night was, what seemed to make him and his coach even happier was the team’s success in limiting turnovers against the Cavaliers.
The Hawks may have still lost the turnover battle, coughing the ball up 12 times to the Cavaliers’ eight, but after a blowout loss to East Forsyth in their previous game, losing 21 turnovers in the process, 12 doesn’t seem so bad.
“The biggest thing today (was) the turnovers,” Jarod Stevenson said. “In the first scrimmage game, we played against Carrboro and … those guys were real physical, played man-to-man and they didn’t even trap, they were just being physical, and they were just taking the ball from us. Whereas today, I felt we were strong with the ball, we were able to take the trap and still find our open man, so that’s a big first step for us.”
Three days later, last Friday, Seaforth went to Yanceyville and earned its first-ever conference win with a double-digit victory over the Bartlett Yancey Buccaneers, 62-52.
It pushed the Hawks’ record to 2-5 on the year as their growing pains — coming from a team full of underclassmen — start to settle in.
“It definitely wasn’t what we wanted, but I think a lot of people are picking (Cummings, 6-0) to win the conference, so I felt we made progress as far as the season going along because … a lot of these guys have never even played varsity or even J.V.,” Jarod Stevenson said. “We’ve only been practicing, what, 3-4 weeks now? So it’s a process for them to learn how to play at this level and I think we’re taking baby steps.”
Reporter Victor Hensley can be reached at vhensley@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @Frezeal33.