McMECHEN – As a youngster Bishop Donahue’s Taylor Straughn excelled at several sports, but upon arrival to high school he decided to specialize on the hardwood. So while many of his teammates were going through the rigors of football season, Straughn always had a basketball in his hands.

The Bishops got an unusually late start to the hoops season and Straughn had grown weary of competing against the same guys he sits beside in class. Thursday night at Father Raymond Jablonski Gym on Tommy ‘Dino’ Smith Memorial Court, the 6-foot, 185-pound Straughn picked on someone else.

Straughn scored the first 14 Bishops (1-0) points, had 37 by halftime and finished with career-highs of nine 3-pointers and 46 points to lead his club to an 88-50, season-opening victory against Bridgeport (0-7).

”And he wasn’t being unselfish about it,” Donahue coach Tom Wise said. ”My, God, he’s about as unselfish as you can get.

”He just shot the ball so well the first half. It was just phenomenal.”

Straughn, a junior and returning first team all-stater, was 7 of 9 including 5 of 7 from 3-point land for 21 points as Bishop Donahue built a 29-9 lead after one quarter. By halftime he was 12-for-15 and 8 of 11, respectively, outscoring the Bulldogs by himself, 37-25, in the first half as Donahue raced to a 34-point cushion.

”Straughn is a helluva player and you can tell he has invested a lot of time in the gym,” Bridgeport coach Donnie Cash said. ”They’re a good team and we knew that coming in.

”I know they lost a lot from last year, but they’ve got some kids that can play.”

Like Will Robinson. He totalled 12 points and helped a Donahue swarm that caused 24 turnovers on the part of the Bulldogs, who have struggled all season again pressure defenses.

”Obviously that was a big part of the first part of the game, was to go after them and make them play fast,” Wise said. ”We forced I don’t know how many turnovers early, but it was a bunch of them.

”Then when Taylor is coming down hitting 3s like they’re layups, it opened up pretty quickly.”

Straughn closed the third quarter with his ninth and final 3-point basket as Donahue built a 78-38 advantage.

”All we’ve been doing in practice is scrimmaging to get ready for this game and we’ve all been itching to play,” said Straughn, who was 17-for-23 from the floor, 3 of 3 at the free-throw line and 9 of 13 from 3. ”It’s a credit to my teammates who gave me the ball and kept telling me to shoot. They have faith in me.

”Losing as many seniors as we did, they rely on me to score more this year. So that is what I am trying to do.”

Straughn went 1 of 2 to begin the fourth quarter before taking a seat on the bench. Jimmy Hull and Trey Miller scored seven apiece for the Bishops.

The Bulldogs were paced by Marc Perrelli and Eli Williams with 14 and 13 points, respectively.

”I know we got beat by 38, but we did some things in this game we haven’t in the first six games,” Cash said. ”I told the kids ‘don’t look at the scoreboard. We’ve got to work on the things we need to do to go in the right direction,’ and I think we did that especially on the offensive end.

”We were cutting and doing stuff we’ve been working on.”