By Tim Hackett
Orange lost the opening tip of the 2019-20 season, allowing Research Triangle a chance at the game’s first points. But the Panthers’ defense forced a quick turnover, and Machai Holt sprung a streaking Joey McMullin with a skip pass for a layup and the opening salvo seconds in.
And that was just the beginning. Sweltering half-court defense. Countless turnovers. About a dozen three-pointers. One huge second-half run. 38 Joey McMullin points. All that added up to an 80-62 Orange (1-0) victory over the Research Triangle Raptors (3-1) in the Panthers’ season opener – an 18-point margin of victory that rarely seemed that secure.
In truth, for a few minutes in the first quarter it seemed like the Panthers were primed for a blowout. It was a 3A vs. 1A matchup in this makeshift meeting following the cancellation of Orange’s scheduled opener on Friday, but dismissing Research Triangle as “just a 1A team” would have been rash – this was a Raptors team fresh off a 23-win season, and one that had started 2019 with three more wins, all by an average of nearly 30 points a game. But even still, Orange nearly ran the Raptors off the floor in the first period – McMullin and Jason Franklin combined to hit threes on four straight Panther possessions to balloon the early edge out to 16-2, allowing Derryl Britt the chance to swap out all five of his floor players at once, hockey style, to test out some of his other pieces. The Raptors had barely been able to cross half court against Orange’s starters, and they found more success against the reserves, but the hosts had still built a 25-12 lead after one period.
Both teams showcased tenacious, unrelenting pressure defense, and, more impressively, maintained that pressure for almost the entire game. Orange worked in a three-quarter-court press most of the evening, and Research Triangle often countered with a half-court press once the second quarter began. That led to countless rushed passes, intercepted passes, and straight up bad passes from both sides, but once a team was able to get down the floor, they were both able to finish with relative ease. Orange kept the visitors at arm’s length, however, and held a 44-27 lead as the teams headed to halftime.
Orange had controlled the game throughout, but the Raptors had hung around. It seemed that Orange was searching for one more solid run to put them ahead for good – but they couldn’t find it. Instead, the Raptors cranked up the pressure even further, and converted seemingly every Orange turnover into a bucket, and Raptor shots that didn’t fall in the first half started to roll in. Barry Marrow hit shots from inside. Eli Griffith hit shots from out. Elliott Klappenbach dominated both boards en route to a 20-point day. And the Raptors closed the third quarter on a 17-7 run to shrink the Panther lead down to 57-51 with one period left.
The flashy, frenetic Orange offense was the highlight of the first half, but, at this moment, truly tested in the contest for the first time, the Panther defense locked in, restricting the Raptors to just two field goals for the entire final period – and the second came on a layup as the final buzzer sounded. On the other side, Jacob Thompson hit a pair of threes, Tucker Miller hit a handful of free throws, and McMullin hit just about every shot he attempted as part of a career-high 38-point outburst, and Orange walked away with an 80-62 win.
It had been 280 days since Orange closed the 2018-19 season with a lopsided loss to Southern. But interestingly for a team with no seniors last year, this year’s Orange team looks quite a bit different. Of course, there’s no more Mekai Collins, who headed back to Cedar Ridge to finish where he started, and Zyon Pettiford was conspicuously absent from the preseason roster. But Orange clearly has some pieces in place to improve on a 10-18 season last year, especially when most baseline stats painted the Panthers as a better-than-average team in spite of that worse-than-average record. Thompson and Franklin showed some poise and some handles as the primary ball carriers. Kendrell Brooks and Jacobi Harris combined for 13 crucial points off the bench in different roles with Holt in foul trouble most of the night. And then, of course, there’s McMullin, who was nearly perfect from the line and beyond the arc in the best performance of his career. For now, the Panthers can be pleased with their offensive performance against a team that looks poised to produce at the 1A level again – but they’ll know that without their defensive performance, Monday night’s result might have looked quite a bit different.