ATTICA – North Montgomery stopped a six-game losing streak on Saturday with a dominating 54-29 win at Attica.
After the Red Ramblers jumped to a 4-0 lead, the Chargers ended the first quarter on a 14-0 run to lead 14-6. North Montgomery led 28-10 at the half.
The Chargers, who improved to 2-14 with the win, have struggled offensively in January — and those struggles continued on Saturday — but they found other ways to pull away from Attica.
“I thought we had good looks all night, they just didn’t fall, but I thought our guys continued to play hard and get after them and make it hard for them to score and we did a really good job of pushing the ball in transition,” third-year North Montgomery coach Chad Arnold said.
North Montgomery connected on just 7-of-22 (32%) of 3-point attempts, but were 9-of-20 inside the arc and had balanced scoring throughout.
Jarrod Kirsch led the Chargers with 15, while Drew Norman added a career-high 10 points, Ross Dyson nine and Jakob Kirsch eight. Nolan Graham and Kelby Harwood each had five.
“That’s good to see and we need to see more of that,” Arnold said. “It would help in the games to get some more balance. I thought a lot of these points came from our guys getting out in transition, getting good looks, and getting in the paint.”
North Montgomery’s defense held Attica to a 7-of-27 effort from the field and forced 24 Red Rambler turnovers.
Seth Miller led Attica (0-12) with nine points, while Garrett Crowder added seven.
After posting a winning record in 2019-2020, Saturday’s win was just the fourth for the Chargers in the last two seasons, but Arnold understands his team has to trust the process of returning to a winning tradition.
“We need to stay the process,” he said. “I mean it’s tough. Hopefully by continuing to work and doing the little things out there would help us a lot more. I think a lot of these kids just have to believe in what we are teaching them and if they do that, we could have some really good years coming.”
North Montgomery welcomes Benton Central on Thursday.
