Head coach Jonny Mitchell said it wasn’t pretty, but his team will take the win.

Friday night, the Goshen boys defeated rival Zion Chapel in a knock down, drag out 57-47 victory.

Elijah Smith and Quavion Simmons led Goshen with 12 points each on the night.

Aside from Smith and Simmons, though, Goshen struggled from the field throughout the game, but Mitchell said his team found other  ways to win Friday night.

“We didn’t shoot the ball real well tonight,” Mitchell said. “We missed some shots that I won’t say we normally hit, but a lot of times we’ve made a higher percentage of what we did tonight. We weren’t getting it done that way, so we had to attack the basket and bring our defense forward.”

Early in the game, the Eagles and Rebels traded leads back and forth, especially in the first quarter, which saw four lead changes.

The Eagles keyed in on Zion Chapel big man Christopher Adair early, driving at him and forcing him out of the game in the first quarter with two fouls. Adair would not enter the game again until the third quarter.

“I won’t say going in we wanted to necessarily target him, but early on, we tried to get the ball inside to the post guys to hopefully create some fouls,” Mitchell said.

In the second quarter, Goshen took its final lead of the game on a basket by Simmons to put the Eagles ahead 20-19.

Smith followed up immediately with a layup of his own, extending Goshen’s lead on the way to a  30-22 halftime lead, their biggest of the first half.

In the second half, Goshen’s full-court press gave the Zion Chapel offense issues. The Rebels turned the ball over frequently; giving the Eagles easy points the other way.

Adair was ineffective in the second half despite playing the majority of the final two quarters. He finished with just five points.

Late in the half, Goshen pulled away, adding the exclamation point to the game on back-to-back 3-pointers from Terrianno Griffin and Azontae Rogers.

Zion Chapel tried for the lead one final time, going on a 6-0 run, but the deficit was too great for the Rebels to overcome.