{"id":101997,"date":"2025-12-27T03:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T03:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/101997\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T03:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T03:26:10","slug":"ottawa-shakes-off-slow-start-northridge-prep-for-plano-christmas-classic-opening-triumph-shaw-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/101997\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa shakes off slow start, Northridge Prep for Plano Christmas Classic-opening triumph \u2013 Shaw Local"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ottawa Pirates<\/a> didn\u2019t come out shooting or defending the ball exceptionally well in the early-going of their early Friday afternoon opener against Northridge Prep in the 62nd Plano Christmas Classic.<\/p>\n

Luckily for the Pirates, they more than made up for it in the second quarter.<\/p>\n

Ottawa advanced on to a 5:30 p.m. Saturday championship quarterfinal matchup with archrival La Salle-Peru via a comfortable, 61-39 victory Friday over Northridge Prep. The Pirates trailed by four points through one quarter, then exploded in the second, outscoring the Knights 24-10 to assume control.<\/p>\n

Senior post Owen Sanders put up a 17-point, 10-rebound double-double for Ottawa. Rory Moore added a dozen points, Dominic Parks (four assists) and Blake Schiltz contributed six points apiece, Hezekiah Joachim added one point and a game-high five assists, and junior George Shumway scored a career-best 10 points.<\/p>\n

Two of Shumway\u2019s 10 came on a hustle steal and contorting, contested layup just ahead of the third-quarter buzzer that fired up the Pirates to put the Knights away once and for all in the opening minutes of the fourth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stunted towards [Northridge\u2019s ball-handler] hoping to get him to pick it up, and I managed to poke it out,\u201d Shumway said. \u201cI got the ball at half court and looked up at the shot clock, five seconds left, so from there I had to go up with it, and it ended up going in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just piped up, end of the quarter, make a buzzer-beater.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Ottawa coaching staff, including assistant Bob Bartman and head coach Mark Cooper (in center), talk things over with the Pirates during a timeout in their 61-39 win over Northridge Prep on Friday, Dec. 26, 2025, at the Plano Christmas Classic. (J.T. Pedelty)<\/p>\n

Ottawa (6-2) trailed 12-8 through one quarter, struggling to 3-of-11 shooting from the field while Northridge Prep (4-7) was 4-for-8 including a trio of 3s.<\/p>\n

That all changed with the start of the second quarter. The Pirates came out blazing with a pair of Parks\u2019 3-pointers in the opening 90 seconds of the second sandwiched around an old-fashioned three-point play from Schiltz. The 12-8 deficit had become a 17-14 lead, and Ottawa continued to wax it from there, leading by 10 at halftime, 32-22.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we looked really slow early,\u201d Pirates coach Mark Cooper said. \u201cDom gave us a nice spark [with a pair of 3-pointers] in the second quarter, Rory and George throughout the game did a lot of good things, and Owen became more of a presence as the game went on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Billy Arnold finished with 14 points and a pair of steals to lead Northridge Prep. Ben Lukens and Dominic Chapello chipped in five points apiece for a Knights team outshot 47.8% (22-of-46) to 31.9% (15-of-47) and outrebounded 36-27 by the Pirates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going through a lot of growing pains right now as a team,\u201d Knights coach Will Rey said. \u201cWe\u2019re playing four sophomores in our eight-man rotation and two juniors who haven\u2019t played varsity basketball before. So six of our eight are new varsity players, and it\u2019s showing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an excuse, it\u2019s a fact, but we\u2019ve had a lot of moments this year where we played better than we did today, so give [Ottawa] a lot of credit. I thought they did a nice job of finding our weaknesses and exploiting them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comfortably ahead by 19 points, Ottawa was able to rest its starters the final 2:26 of the fourth quarter in preparation for playing four games over five days, continuing with what promises to be a physical, emotional rivalry meeting with La Salle-Peru on Saturday for the right to go to the semifinals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe come here to play in the winners\u2019 bracket and see how successful we can be,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cNow we\u2019ve positioned ourselves there, and we\u2019ll have to up our level of play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ottawa Pirates didn\u2019t come out shooting or defending the ball exceptionally well in the early-going of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[35359,160,162,161],"class_list":["post-101997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-illinois-high-school-boys-basketball","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}