Senior Landon Lear scored his 1,000 career point on Dec. 28 as the Wolverines boys basketball team defeated the Edgewood Warriors 65-43 at West Geauga High School.
Game photos click here.
Senior Landon Lear scored his 1,000 career point on Dec. 28 as the Wolverines boys basketball team defeated the Edgewood Warriors 65-43 at West Geauga High School.
In achieving this milestone, Lear became only the fifth player in school history to score 1,000 points.
Afterwards, Lear talked about the meaningfulness of this amazing moment.
“For me it’s pretty meaningful,” said Lear. “It’s always been a goal of mine to get 1,000. So it’s pretty cool to finally get it.”
Seeing Lear score his 1000th point was not a surprise to Wolverines Head Coach Micah Young.
In fact, Coach Young said that Lear was already a standout athlete when he attended Wolverine youth basketball camp years earlier.
“From the first day of our camp, you could tell he was built to be a special player,” Coach Young said. “We always knew he was going to be a very good player. It’s just really cool to see it come to fruition now.”
Unquestionably, talent alone does not lead an athlete to achieve such success.
In addition to Lear’s athletic talent, he has worked diligently.
“Landon is a kid that’s done everything right for four years,” said Coach Young. “From the day he walked into this place he has always been self-motivated. He works on his game more than anybody in the program. He just constantly wants to work. I think that’s what makes a great basketball player like him, he’s very self-motivated.”
Although scoring 1,000 career points is a phenomenal achievement, Lear continues to be focused on achieving additional individual and team goals. In particular, Lear is hoping to set the school record for career points.
“We’re not done yet, we have a lot of things we still want to accomplish this year, as a team, but for me that’s a great accomplishment,” Lear said. “The next goal is to try and set the school record for points. If I can get that, it would be amazing.”
With the Wolverines up tempo pace of play, Lear definitely has a chance to set the school scoring record.
In fact, the up-tempo offense was on display right from the opening tip in the Wolverines’ victory over the Warriors.
With senior point guard Colin Whiting and Lear leading the break in transition, the Wolverines got out to a 17-7 first quarter lead.
Playing lockdown defense in the second quarter, the Wolverines extended their lead to 38-9 heading into halftime.
Lear led all scorers with 15 first half points.
Coach Young was happy with the Wolverines first half defense. He said that the good defensive play led to the ability to push the pace in transition.
“I thought first half, we came out (and) we really did exactly what we needed to do,” said Coach Young. “We shut down some of their better players and offensively the ball moved so well.”
He added: “We got the ball going in transition. As I preach to our guys, good defense leads to good offense. When you’re playing good defense it’s going to lead to transition offense.”
In the second half, Lear scored 11 of his team’s 27 points as the Wolverines claimed a 65-43 victory over the Warriors.
For the contest, Lear led the Wolverines with 26 points. Also leading the Wolverines offensively included Whiting (10 points), Cooper Paskowski (6), Finn Keenan (5), Ryan Mobley (4), Dominic Paros (3), Vincent Vecchio (3), Charlie Culek (2), Tyler Fink (2) and Jason Renner (2).
With the victory, the Wolverines moved to 6-2 on the season.
The Wolverines will next return to the court on Dec 30 when they host the Chardon Hilltoppers.
