The Potomac Highlands Dispatch - the online newspaper

Sentinels cruise to AMAC win at Frankfort
Falcons coach: 'We quit on ourselves'

By The Potomac Highlands Dispatch
SHORT GAP, W.Va., Dec. 23 - Garrett D'Atri is normally pretty good at shooting from anywhere on the court. He specializes in taking shots from the perimeter.

He wasn't so good at it Thursday night. That didn't matter, however, as he and the Fort Hill Sentinels were good at almost everything else. Eight of the 10 players who dressed for Fort Hill scored - three of them in double figures - as the Sentinels coasted to a 75-36 Appalachian Mountain Athletic Conference win Thursday on the road at Frankfort.

D'Atri said it's "not often" he has such an off night from a distance.

"I'm not going to blame it on the rims, but it is harder to shoot here a little bit," he said. "The rims are bouncier."

Frankfort played Fort Hill tough through the first eight minutes even though the Falcons could have given up after just 89 seconds. That's how long it took for the Sentinels to build a 6-0 lead with relative ease.

It wasn't as easy as it first looked, though, for Fort Hill over the next six and a half minutes.

The Falcons' Brian Bills hit a jumper to pull within 6-2. Fort Hill led 10-2 after field goals by Michael Crabtree and Will Harris. But Ryan Bobo hit the second of two free throw attempts to begin an 8-3 Falcons run to finish the first period.

Eight minutes into the game, sixth-ranked Fort Hill held a tenuous 13-10 lead.

That first period, D'Atri said, Fort Hill "forced a couple passes" and committed some "stupid turnovers."

"We can't take any team lightly," D'Atri said. "Against a team like this, you get ahead a little bit, you don't want to mope off."

Coming out of the brief intermission, Fort Hill woke up. Brandon remson, who finished with seven points and 10 rebounds, made a layup 52 seconds into the second period for a 15-10 Sentinels lead. Then Harris converted a steal into two points and, a minute later, hit two free throws to give Fort Hill a 19-10 advantage.

J.P. Twigg hit the second of two free throws for Frankfort's first point of the quarter - nearly three minutes into the second period - but Fort Hill scored eight of the game's next 10 points for a commanding 29-13 lead with 2:46 left in the first half.

In that 8-2 spurt, Remson's putback made it 23-13. Mark Kelly then hit a jumper with 3:35 to go and, 27 seconds later, hit two foul shots to put the Sentinels up 27-13. Harris hit two more free throws 22 seconds after that.

Fort Hill led 35-20 at halftime, butcoach Glenn Rice wanted his players to regroup and focus on execution.

"I didn't feel like we were pressuring enough on defense" in the first period, Rice said. "on offense ... we could have done better."

Rice said his halftime message focused on getting the team to be more aggressively defensively. It worked, as the Sentinels permitted just 16 second-half points. Overall, the Falcons committed 26 turnovers.

"We quit tonight," said Frankfort coach Scott Slider. "We got to get it going. We quit on ourselves."