EATON — Denny Shepherd said his team is a work in progress.
After beating Brookville two week ago, Eaton’s boys’ basketball team has now dropped four straight games, including three last week.
Shepherd said his team is struggling to stop what he calls elite scorers and its taking at toll on the team.
The Eagles are also missing a key part of their team in junior Caleb Caplinger, who has missed the last several games due to an illness.
“We can’t stop elite scorers and we miss Caleb,” Shepherd said. “Overall, other than on (Arcanum’s) Carter Gray I thought we played pretty decent defense, but at the end of the day we didn’t make easy baskets, open looks. We had the looks offensively; we just have to finish them.”
It was the theme of the week — not being able to stop the opposing team’s leading scorer, while not taking advantage of open shots.
Eaton fell to visiting Valley View (72-43) on Tuesday, Dec. 17, Monroe (67-40) on Friday, Dec. 20, at home, and to visiting Arcanum (59-50) on Saturday, Dec. 21.
Against Valley View, junior Travis Pittman scored 18 points to lead the Eagles. Senior Hunter Frost added 10 and five rebounds.
Against Monroe, Pittman led the way again with 11 points. Junior Cameron Lewis added seven, while sophomore’s Breyden Boston and Clayton Kiracofe each had six.
To close out the week, Frost led Eaton with 18 points, while Boston added 10 points and Lewis chipped with eight against Arcanum.
Eaton (3-5, 1-3 SWBL Southwestern) is scheduled to play at the Tri-Village Patriot Holiday Classic on Friday and Saturday, Dec. 27-28.
The junior varsity will play at 4:30 p.m. and the varsity will tip-off at 7:30 p.m. on Friday.
The Patriot Holiday Classic adjusted the game times for Saturday, due to the Ohio State football playoff game that night. Games will begin at noon with the junior varsity consolation, followed at 1:30 p.m. by the junior varsity championship game. At 3 p.m., the varsity consolation game will tip-off and at 4:30 p.m. the varsity championship game will be held.
“We’ve got to get back to work. We got to keeping working on being able to play through physical basketball and staying mentally tough. We’re a work in progress right now,” Shepherd said. “It will be nice to get our whole team back. That will help things.”
