Five of a kind: Carter deals five 3s as Auburn beats Riverton in Sangamo clash

AUBURN — It took some time for Auburn’s taller roster to wear down Riverton, but Cooper Carter was dialed in to get the Trojans some much-needed distance in a 60-48 Sangamo Conference win on Tuesday at Doglio Gymnasium.

Carter, a junior, was 5-for-9 from behind the 3-point arc and finished with a game-high 16 points as Auburn (20-2 overall, 2-0 Sangamo) hit another benchmark — 20 wins — in a season the team hopes is filled with even more.

The Sangamon County Tournament champion Trojans and the Hawks (16-4, 1-1) changed the lead five times in the first half and were tied twice more as Riverton’s game plan focused on preventing Auburn from getting into its high-post offense despite the Trojans having the advantage with the pair of 6-foot-4 forwards Grant Dobson and Clayton Kessler.

The lead went back and forth four other times in the third quarter before Carter’s second 3-pointer of the period put Auburn ahead for good.

“It feels great,” Carter said. “My teammates were finding me; it was pretty fun.”

Carter’s final 3-pointer — with 4 minutes, 38 seconds left in the game — gave the Trojans their biggest lead to that point at 49-39. Riverton, with some key players in foul trouble, were unable to get back within single digits again.

Completing the to-do list

First, Auburn won the Sangamon County Tournament earlier this month for the first time since 1986. Then, the Trojans became the second-fastest team in program history to hit the 20-win mark, which earns the team a banner in Doglio Gym.

Now, the Trojans have other goals: a Sangamo Conference title and some more postseason hardware. There are 11 juniors and seniors on the Auburn roster who remember the elation that came with the team’s Class 2A regional title in 2022 — the Trojans’ first since 2004.

“I just got called up,” Carter said of the 2022 team. “It was awesome. We’ve got a lot of guys returning from that team."

More: Titans declaw Lions: Glenwood nearly doubles up City champ Lanphier in CS8

One player in particular was Sawyer Smith, who had 15 points on 5-for-10 shooting on Tuesday. While he’d like to win each game, Smith said the team needs to learn from every outing — a win or a loss.

“I think playing a better team and winning by one point or losing by one point, as long as the team gets better by the end of the day (is key),” said the senior. “We want to win conference and all that, and we’re going to work our butts off for conference games, but just getting better for regionals and going on a run there is the main goal.”

Still time for much-needed improvements

Despite the win, Auburn coach Seth McCoy wants his team to clean up a few things before Friday’s road conference game at Athens: namely, turnovers, missed free throws and allowing offensive rebounds. Riverton had 17 more shots (19-for-58, 32.2% compared to 18-for-41, 43.9% for Auburn) thanks to a 17-8 edge on the offensive glass and by turning Auburn over 17 times.

“We have to take care of the ball better ... and some of them were just silly: throwing it out of bounds, getting in a rush,” McCoy said. “We had 22 turnovers against (Stanford Olympia on Jan. 19). We can’t do that. We’ve got to get better there, we’ve got to get better at the free-throw line and I thought we did not rebound very well in the first half.

"(Riverton) got some offensive rebounds; we shouldn’t (allow) a bunch of offensive rebounds to opponents: they should have under 10 every time, under eight, but they got us on the offensive glass. With our size, we can’t give up 11 offensive rebounds, and we can’t turn it over 17 times a game. If we can get those numbers down to six or five offensive rebounds and 10-12 turnover mark, we’d be a lot better.”

Auburn was 18-for-28 (64.3%) at the free-throw line, which was an improvement over the Olympia performance last Friday (9-for-20), but it took an 11 of 14 effort at the line in the fourth quarter to get those numbers after the Trojans began 7-for-14 through three periods.

“We’ve just got to be better there,” McCoy stressed. “It’s not for a lack of practicing or pressure free throws, we’ve just got to focus, and we’ve got guys who can hit them.”

Hawks’ stifling defensive strategy

Riverton frustrated Auburn early by preventing Dobson and Kessler from catching the ball in the high post and distributing from there — a staple of the Auburn offense.

“Matt’s a heckuva coach; he really is,” McCoy said of Riverton coach Matt Mead. “He does a really, really nice job, and they made it really difficult. Every set we tried to run in the first quarter, they completely took us out of it.

“I told the kids that was my fault in the first quarter, we’re just going to get into our base offense and play instead of trying to go spot to spot. We got better looks in the second quarter, and then we started getting our rhythm more in the second half.”

More: What to know from the Sangamon County Tournament: Auburn captures first title since 1986

However, Mead said the Hawks just didn’t do enough of that.

“(Through three quarters), I thought defensively we were playing, and we were rebounding pretty well on the defensive end.

“Rebounding is going to be a challenge for us every night: we’re not the biggest team or strongest, but I thought we rebounded well, I thought we guarded most of their set plays pretty well. Offensively, we were a little bit disjointed at times, but I felt like we got a lot of good shots; we just didn’t knock some of them down.”

Riverton got a team-high 15 points from freshman Julian Rice while junior Jaxson Miller added 14 points. Senior Antonyo Davis finished with 14 and eight rebounds.

Auburn wasn’t the only team in the game with high hopes for the rest of the season.

“We put three quarters together on the road against a really good team,” Mead said. “Auburn’s a tough opponent, and I think we’ve just got to continue to build on that.

“If we can get to the point over the next month where we’re hitting our stride playing four solid quarters, I like our team. We’ve got good depth and good pieces; we’ve just got to keep putting it together.”

Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Sangamo basketball: Carter's hot hand helps Auburn overcome Riverton's defense