Hamilton Heights' boys' high school basketball team didn't have a need to call in a SWAT team Wednesday night. The Hawks handled all the swatting by themselves.
McCallie's shooting inside its own gymnasium was about as frigid as it was outside. Couple that with the rejections Hamilton Heights piled up while guarding its goal and the result was a 60-40 Hawks' victory.
"If they hadn't blocked so many of our shots, a couple of them might've gone in," McCallie coach John Shulman said. "I don't know if we shot poorly or not.
"It's discouraging when you have layup after layup after layup get blocked. We've got size, on our level. They've really got size. I spent 24 years coaching in college. They look like Division I level."
One illustration of McCallie's shooting woes is that it didn't make a 3-point shot all night until Mac Hunt connected from the left side with 2:15 to play. Even from the free-throw line, the Blue Tornado missed as many of their 18 shots as they made.
Most of the blocks came on drives to the basket, challenging the Hawks' frontline.
"They did a good job of taking it in there and trying to get us into foul trouble," said Hamilton Heights coach Zach Ferrell, who played for Shulman at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga from 2005-09. "I thought we did a good job, still, of protecting the basket."
The Blue Tornado's gameplan is fullcourt defense with mass substitutions with the idea of creating turnovers that lead to scoring opportunities. They forced the Hawks into 15 turnovers in the first half, but Hamilton Heights (15-1) led 28-17 at the break.
"We turned them over quite a bit," Shulman said. "The only problem was we couldn't go score the ball on the other end."
Said Ferrell: "We definitely had way too many turnovers in the first half. We made it a point of emphasis at halftime: Be in control; slow it down; make the easy play; take care of the ball."
The telling stretch came in the final two and a half minutes of the third quarter when the Hawks closed the period on a 10-0 run to go up 45-22. McCallie (16-2) scored the first eight points of the fourth quarter, but got no closer.
"It felt like a one-point game the whole time," Ferrell said. "Then you look up and we win by 20. Their kids battled the whole time. Our kids battled. It was a great, great atmosphere. Fun night."
Hamilton Heights' 6-foot-10 center Abdulhakeem Ado had three dunks in the first quarter and he and teammate Silas Adheke scored 12 points each. Strahinja Micakovic and Joan Duran had 11 apiece with nine of Duran's coming in the second half. Ezekiel Balogun chipped in with eight.
Hunt's nine points paced 10 McCallie scorers. Adrian Thomas added eight.
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him at twitter.com/KelleySmiddie.