Troy’s zone defense was too much for Shaker to handle.
The Flying Horses limited the Blue Bison to two points in the third quarter as they pulled away for a 52-36 victory in Thursday’s Section II Class AA semifinal at the Times Union Center.
Troy (19-2) meets Green Tech (16-3) in Monday’s championship game at the Times Union Center. The Eagles knocked off five-time defending Class AA champion Christian Brothers Academy 64-60 in an earlier semifinal game.
Leading 23-22 at halftime, Troy switched from man-to-man to zone in the second half, and the results were devastating to Shaker (18-3). After David Morrison scored the first basket of the third quarter, the Blue Bison didn’t score again until Morrison hit a shot with 5:16 left in the fourth quarter. By then, Troy had been on a 19-0 run that gave the Flying Horses a 42-24 lead.
`That pretty much deflated us,` said Shaker coach Jeff Holmes. `They played great defense. We couldn’t get into our offense at all.`
The Blue Bison had only one good spurt in the game — a 16-0 run from the middle of the first quarter to the midway point of the second quarter that gave them a 17-9 lead on Troy. But the Flying Horses closed the first half on a 14-5 run, and they poured it on from there.
`We felt pretty good at halftime because we though we could play better in the second half, but unfortunately we didn’t,` said Holmes.
Dyaire Holt scored 16 points, and Jerrell Reid added 11 points for Troy, which defeated Shaker in the Sectional semifinals for the second consecutive year. Morrison had 12 points for the Blue Bison.
