By JIM WALKER

Tribune Sports Editor

When you score 93 points and win your opening game, you have to be happy.

For Ironton Fighting Tigers’ head coach Mark LaFon, he was happy with a 93-73 win over the Ashland Tomcats Saturday night, but…

“It was a good win against a good team, but we can’t be satisfied. We did a lot of things right, but we did an awful lot of things wrong,” said LaFon.

The right stuff?

Zac Carter had 35 points, Travis Elliott scored 24, Trey Fletcher had 14 points and 12 rebounds, and Malcolm Morton added 10 points, 6 assists and 3 steals.

Ironton also shot 37 of 59 from the field for 62.7 percent and had 12 assists.

“When we play as a team, we’re hard to beat. I thought we played really well as a team tonight,” said Elliott.

Now for the dark side.

Ironton’s defense allowed Dylan Delaney to score 36 points and the Tomcats hit 11 of 27 shots from behind the arc. Delaney was 7 of 12 from downtown and 7 of 7 from 2-point range.

“Give Ashland and Delaney credit. We jumped out on them but they didn’t quit. They battle back and Delaney just kept coming. We didn’t have an answer for him,” said LaFon.

“We didn’t shoot well from the foul line, but I was disappointed we didn’t rebound better. ”

The Fighting Tigers came out of the starting gate running as they shot 14 of 19 from the field. Carter scored 9 points and Elliott 6 and the lead was 30-13.

Delaney hit three trifectas in the first quarter and score 7 points in the second quarter as Ashland got within 22-11 with 2:15 left in the half.

But A layups by Josh Glover, Carter and Morton opened up a 28-13 lead and Nick Culbertson’s putback just before the buzzer finished off the first half scoring.

Carter hit a 17-footer and converted a 3-point play as Ironton opened up a 67-44 lead.

Corey Gregg then had his own 3-point play and Delaney made a layup as Ashland trailed 67-49 at the end of the quarter.

The Tomcats got within 71-60 on a shot by Gregg, but Ironton went on an 8-2 run to lead 81-65 with two and a half minutes left.

Gregg finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds while Ryan Whetsel scored 13.

Ashland 13 17 19 24 = 73

Ironton 30 15 22 26 = 93

ASHLAND (2-1): Dylan Delaney 7 7 1-2 36, Corey Gregg 4 1 4-7 15, Ryan Whetsel 3 2 1-3 13, Kyle Bush 0 1 2-2 5, Chris Johnson 2 0 0-2 4, Zach Hart 0 0 0-0 0, Logan Salow 0 0 0-0 0, Tyler Gibbs 1 0 0-0 2. Totals: 27-65 8-16 73. Fouls: 19. Fouled out: Johnson (4th 4:38). Rebounds: 15-14=29 (Gregg 10, Hart 5). Team rebounds: 6. Assists: 9 (Bush 5). Steals: 5 (Delaney 2, Bush 2). Turnovers: 15.

IRONTON (1-0): Malcolm Morton 2 1 3-5 10, Travis Elliott 8 1 5-9 24, Zac Carter 13 2 3-4 35, Trevor White 3 0 0-2 6, Trey Fletcher 4 1 3-5 14, Josh Glover 1 0 0-0 2, Josh Murphy 0 0 0-0 0, Nick Culbertson 1 0 0-0 2, Nolan Johnson 0 0 0-0 0. Totals: 37-59 14-25 93. Fouls: 17. Fouled out: White (4th 2:34). 3-point goals: 5-10. Rebounds: 11-26=37 (Fletcher 12, Morton 6). Team rebounds: 2. Assists: 12 (Morton 6, Fletcher 3, Elliott 2). Steals: 9 (Carter 3, Morton 3, Elliott 2). Turnovers: 14. Blocked shots: Fletcher 2, White 1.