Wednesday, May 18, 2016 THE GREENEVILLE SUN B-7www.greenevillesun.com

ending the city’s 52-year championship drought — James isn’t satisfied.

“I think don’t think we have complacency in our minds,” he said. “We have a goal and our goal is not nine wins. I’ve won nine games before. I’ve won 14 games before. We will face some adversity.”

The 31-point win is the most lopsided in Cleve-land’s postseason his-tory.

But unlike their sec-ond-round series when they made 77 3-pointers and swept Atlanta, the Cavs did most of their damage from close range. Cleveland made just 7 of 20 3-point attempts.

DeMar DeRozan scored 18 points and Bismack Biyombo added 12 for Toronto, which had just one day to prepare for the Cavs after going to seven games with Miami.

“I thought they were the fresher team, the quicker team,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said.

Kyle Lowry, who scored 35 points in the Raptors’ series-clinching win over Miami, was held to just eight as he and the Rap-tors were roughed up in their first appearance in the conference finals.

Unless Toronto figures some things out quickly, these Raptors will be extinct, too.

Game 2 is Thursday night.

Cleveland figured to have some rust following a nine-day break since ousting the Hawks. But not only did the Cavs look

refreshed, they looked better than before, tak-ing their game to anoth-er level.

And James, as is almost always the case, led the charge. He finished 11 of 13 from the field and added six rebounds and four assists in just 28 minutes. James spent the final quarter on the bench cheering on Cleve-land’s reserves.

These are the Cavs at full force, not the version missing Love and Irving in last year’s Finals.

“They waited a full reg-ular season to get back to this moment,” James said of his teammates. “They trained their bod-ies all season long to get back to this point and those guys have been spectacular.”

The Cavs outscored the Raptors 33-16 in the sec-ond quarter when James personally welcomed Canada’s NBA fran-chise to the East’s final round with a devastat-ing dunk.

Driving baseline past DeMarre Carroll, James cut across the lane and hammered home a right-handed windmill. He celebrated the slam by tilting his head, back-pedaling and letting out a primal scream along with 20,000 fans.

The impressive bucket capped a 20-2 spurt for the Cavs, whose swarm-ing defense was making life miserable for Lowry and his teammates. Toronto didn’t get its first field goal until 6:28 remained in the quarter. The Raptors regrouped for a moment and closed within 12 before the Cavs decided enough was enough and closed the

half with a 12-4 flurry to go up 66-44.

The Raptors came in as overwhelming under-dogs, but Casey wasn’t worried about the stage being too big or his team fearing the Cavs.

He’s still confident his group will bounce back.

“This score is embar-rassing,” he said. “But it’s just one game.”

And that might be the scariest thing of all.

OFF THE LINE

DeRozan and Lowry did not attempt a free throw despite both play-ing more than 31 min-utes. They combined to take 18 foul shots in Game 7 against Miami, and DeRozan said he

and Lowry needed to be more aggressive.

“We’ve got to come out the gate with that mind-set, being aggressive like we usually do, and I think we didn’t try to do that until later on in the game,” he said.

CHAIRMEN OF THE BOARDS

The Cavs dominated the Raptors inside, out-rebounding them 45-23.

TIP-INS

Raptors: Didn’t have center Jonas Valan-ciunas because of a sprained right ankle. He’s doubtful for Game 2. ... Casey nearly hired Cavs coach Tyronn Lue two years ago before he signed with the Cava-

liers as David Blatt’s top assistant. “We talked, and he made a good deci-sion,” Casey said. “He’s a good young coach, a good person.”

Cavaliers: Cleveland’s nine-game winning streak is the longest for any Cleveland team in postseason history. The Cavs also won nine straight in 2009. ... Lue, who is unbeaten in the playoffs, is f lattered that Lowry calls him a “father figure.” The two became tight when

Toronto’s guard entered the league. “When he first came in, he said that he wanted to be like Tyronn Lue,” Lue said with a chuckle. “He wanted to compare him-self to me. I was like, ‘Well, you can be much better than me.’ He’s very well surpassed me as a player.”

UP NEXT

Game 2 is Thursday night in Cleveland at 8:30 p.m.

PlayoffsStarts on Page B-1

In the 28th minute, Felix Kassens was fouled in the box and converted a penalty kick to get the momen-tum rolling in the right direction.

In the 33rd minute, Jeffrey Williams took a long feed from the right side and quickly flicked it from 15 yards out to get the Buffaloes to within one at 4-3.

Three minutes later Williams looked to have the equalizer as he worked past two defend-ers and into the box, but just before he could get his shot off he was tripped up and posses-sion changed.

Despite the missed opportunity ,West Greene was confident going into the break and had taken the momentum from the Rebels.

“I loved seeing the guys fight right there,” Jones said. “It was great to see them come back and not give up. We told the guys at halftime that we needed to carry it over, and we really felt like we were in position to take the game.”

They needed to get

the tying goal coming out of the break to real-ly get going, but instead a defensive lapse took the wind from their sails.

Jonah Mitz dribbled through the defense and into the box almost unchallenged before let-ting a shot fly from 10 yards to put Sullivan South up 5-3 in the 41st minute.

From there, the goals kept rolling in as Sul-livan South controlled possession and scored four more times before the game ended.

“We really needed to get the first goal com-ing out of the half to tie it up, and boom, they get a goal almost imme-diately,” Jones said. “I don’t know if we weren’t ready or just flat on our feet, but that one hurt us bad. The air got taken out of us right there.”

West Greene started the game about as well as it could have hoped, with Jordan Fillers beating keeper Cade Westbrook after pull-ing in a long feed from Michael Burnham in the fifth minute for a 1-0 lead.

Things quickly turned for the Buffaloes as Josh Johnson collected a hat trick in just seven minutes for the Rebels.

The first goal game in the eighth minute when Noah Rutherford sent a free kick into the box from 30 yards out and

Johnson headed it in.Johnson put Sullivan

South up 2-1 in the 11th minute and then used another header four

minutes later to make it a 3-1 game.

Rutherford got in on the scoring action in the 22nd minute when he

delivered a 25-yard free kick over West Greene’s defense and into the net for a 4-1 lead.

BuffaloesStarts on Page B-1

SPORTS

SUN PHOTO BY TATE RUSSELL

West Greene’s Jordan Fillers scores a goal on Sullivan South goalie Cade Westbrook on Tuesday at Sullivan South in the Region 1-A/AA Tournament.

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