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Three days after losing to Harding in the ME-GA 7 conference tournament championship game, and losing a chance at a perfect season, Olympic coach Ty Baumgardner was curious to see if his team would start the playoffs with any sort of hangover.
There was not one.
In fact, Olympic looked downright scary Monday night at home.
The Trojans, No. 1 in the Sweet 16 and a No. 1 playoff seed, put on a dunk-a-thon in a 76-41 win against overmatched South Caldwell in its first-round game. Olympic (26-1) had nine dunks, 28 offensive rebounds and led by as many as 41 points.
No. 16 seed South Caldwell (10-15) never got adjusted to the Trojans' full-court pressure defense, committing 10 turnovers in the first eight minutes, when South fell behind 27-11.
"That's what we wanted to see after Friday night," Baumgardner said. "After that game, I'd hope you'd have some energy."
Olympic got 24 points and 10 rebounds from Clemson-bound senior center Josh Smith, 14 points and several highlight reel slams from John Brown and 12 points each from Austin Dasent and Allerik Freeman.
Baumgardner said he was especially pleased with the rebounding he got from his team. Olympic simply flew at the offensive glass, often leaping over the shorter South Caldwell team.
"That's been an emphasis lately," Baumgardner said. "We've got some guys that can rebound. We have some length, some athletes and then we've got big Josh inside. We knew we had a size advantage tonight, but we need to be more conscious of attacking the offensive glass. Sometimes we just tend to stand there and watch."
About the only bad news for Olympic was the status of starting point guard Sean Anthony. He appeared to roll his ankle on another player's foot early in the game and limped off to the sidelines. He didn't return and walked to the locker room afterwards, holding one shoe in his hand.
Baumgardner, whose team plays East Gaston Wednesday night at home in the second round, was just glad to see him walking.
"I think he just tweaked it," Baumgardner said. "We'll ice it (Monday night) and (today). We don't have school (today), so we'll have a chance to ice it a lot. And then we'll re-evaluate come Wednesday."
