The following report was written and submitted by ITH reader Dannon Brown (dphattybrown), who got a chance to watch Austin Etherington on Friday night. If you attend games of IU signees, commitments or potential recruits, send us a report to tips@insidethehall.com and it may appear in this very space.
I went to watch Tipton at Hamilton Heights last night and here’s my take on the game.
Austin Etherington drew the challenge of guarding 7-0 Ohio bound Ethan Jacobs. I would say at 6-6 Austin rose to the challenge. He is not afraid to get physical and showed quite a bit of toughness on the block. In dealing with the height disadvantage he also did a very good job of showing his basketball knowledge in playing the leverage and position game with Jacobs. Ethan ended up with 14 points in a game in which he was guarded primarily by Etherington and his brother, Alex, who is a 6-3 freshman.
On the offensive side of the ball, Austin went for a quiet 19 points. He seemed to have a hard time in the low post as Tipton really did a good job on help defense. In the second half when Hamilton Heights was having trouble scoring they went to Austin for their scoring needs. They began running plays to get him the ball up top and allow him to create off the dribble. He hit two pull up 15-footers and got to the line a handful of times. I would say of the 19 points Austin scored on the night, 12-14 came in the second half and most of that in the 4th quarter when his team needed it most. He hit 9 of 14 free throws.
