by Jon M. Gambee, Martin Bureau Chief

Martin closed out its regular boys’ basketball season in the Southwest Athletic Conference’s North Division with a perfect 10-0 record by easily defeating Marcellus Thursday, 60-40.

Tanner Curry led the scoring with 15 points and completed another double-double by garnering 12 rebounds. Garrett Dill had 12 points. In all, 10 Clippers found the basket this night. Freshman Carter Hilton had another strong game, finishing with seven points and four rebounds and Andrew Keyzer finished with six points and four rebounds.

“Marcellus doesn’t have a very good record this year but they are a team that is capable of winning on any given night,” said Clipper coach David Curry. “They are a very young team and are having trouble finishing games at this point. We were at that point not that long ago. Thankfully tonight we came out and took care of business.”

Martin ran out to an 11-7 lead after the first eight minutes and coasted to a 26-17 halftime advantage.

“It is easy for a team look past a team like Marcellus and the kids did not do that,” Curry said, “We came out and executed very well on both ends of the floor. Marcellus played a triangle and two against us in the first half trying to take Tanner and Garrett out of the offensive equation. We worked on this earlier in the week and I thought we did a good job of executing offensively against it.”

The third quarter sealed the deal for Martin, as they outscored Marcellus 19-8, taking a 45-25 lead down the home stretch.

“They played zone and man in the second half and just weren’t able to contain us. We really did a good job of boxing out and controlling the boards on both ends of the floor.

“I give Marcellus a lot of credit for switching things up all game to try to catch us off guard. Our kids did a great job of recognizing what they were doing and attacking it the way they are supposed to. I thought we were outstanding defensively.

“Marcellus is a dribble drive team and were not able to do much against our ball pressure and our help side defense. It seemed like our kids were where they were supposed to be all night.

“Tonight was a great ending to our divisional play. The win puts us at 10-0 in our division. I told them before the game to not lose focus on what we set out to do at the beginning of the year. That was to win the league. Although we locked that up prior to this game I let them know that they need to leave no doubt in anybody’s mind that we were the best in our division. Tonight I felt they did that.

“We are playing well right now on both ends of the floor and hopefully that will continue as we start post-season play on Monday against Climax-Scotts. We are hosting the district a this year which is good thing for us. We have a home record of 7-1 so hopefully we don’t lose another game at home the rest of the season.”

Martin’s final overall season record is 14-5.