Erin Slinde is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Scottsdale Christian Academy for AZPreps365.com

The Scottsdale Christian Academy boys basketball team’s offensive and defensive effort outlasted the NFL YET College Prep Academy, 72-41, on Wednesday night. 

SCA (9-1) started the game with impressive ball movement and ran a balanced offense that outscored NFL YET (3-5) 24-10 in the first quarter. 

Senior guardJacob Ekre started the Eagles’ run with eight points and a rebound within the first quarter.

Senior forward Drew Zittel was aggressive under the basket in the second quarter. He had four rebounds just in the second quarter alone. SCA also held NFL YET to only six points in the second quarter bringing the score to 40-16 at halftime.

NFL YET came out of halftime fired-up. Junior guard Kristopher Floyd started to catch fire in the second half scoring eight points in the third quarter and seven in the fourth quarter. 

“Our goal was to keep Floyd under 18 points," senior shooting guard Ryan Ohlinger said.  "So, when you’re rotating through guys you always have to keep the same goal."

Ohlinger led the Eagles' offense with 14 points. 

All 12 SCA players saw playing time, and10 of them scored.

“If someone hasn’t got a bucket, maybe try and run a play for them because those are the fun moments in high school if you’re not a star basketball player,” Coach John Anderson said.

“Our coaches are holding us accountable to play to our standards that we always play and not playing down to our opponent,” Ekre said. “Coach Anderson has done a good job of letting the guys on the bench know this is their playing time and they need to work for it.”

“We need to be teaching the younger guys how to play," Anderson said, "because they’re ultimately going to be playing at that speed and intensity of the game at some point here hopefully in the future.” 

Although NFL YET wasn’t able to recover in the second half, Coach Armando Ruiz was satisfied with how his players changed their mentality in the third quarter.

“The biggest difference is they stopped worrying about the score and just started playing basketball,” Ruiz said. “More importantly, they started to play as a cohesive unit.

“We know that skill-wise we have a lot of work to do, but what we can control is our effort and hustle. We’re just trying to teach them to play the game the right way,” Ruiz said.

NFL YET will host the Wickenburg Wranglers (5-8) at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.

SCA will host the No. 2 ranked Pima Roughriders (9-1) at 7 p.m. Saturday.