Boys Basketball: Skyline knocks off Northville in season opener

How happy are the Eagles today as they head to practice.

The Skyline boys’ basketball team opened the season Tuesday night with several key players out of the lineup and some question marks out on the floor. While it was just one game, one big question mark was answered – this team has some savvy, guts and pride. They also showed they can play some defense.

Coach Mike Lovelace is thrilled to see that the players who did take the floor represented Skyline basketball by playing hard, turning up the defensive intensity down the stretch and shooting the game into the win column.

The Eagles opened the 2022-23 season with a 48-34 win over visiting Northville.

“Focusing on the guys that could play tonight, we had a good opening game performance,” said Lovelace.

The Eagles stressed defense to start and did just that. Skyline held Northville to one field goal in the first half and a total of five points while building a 21-5 halftime lead. Skyline’s Pete Roebuck made two big shots early in the first quarter to get things started.

In the third quarter, Northville started mixing in opportunity traps and was able to cause a few turnovers and was able to get back in the game with some better shooting and a few defensive lapses by Skyline that did not happen in the first half.

Skyline got a big dunk at the end of the third quarter by Noah Silkworth to maintain a 7 point lead 33-26 going into the fourth. Northville would continue to battle and get the lead down to five with about 4 minutes left in the game.

But Sam Koelling took over in the paint, scoring 9 of his game-high 17 points down the stretch. And Skyline was able to get multiple defensive stops in a row leading to transition offense to build the lead back over double digits.

Koelling also had 12 rebounds to go with his 17 points for a double-double. Ben Stille finished with 10 points and 5 rebounds. Roebuck finished with 8 points and 4 assists; Noah Silkworth had 4 points and 4 rebounds; Ben Solomon had 4 points and 3 assists; Ahmil Bond had 3 points; and Abdo Alqady had 2 points and played great defense on Northville’s guards.

Northville was led by Carlos Anderson with 14 points and Justin Huang with 11 points.