The Bishop Hendricken basketball team rolled to an 84-57 win over visiting Cranston East on Monday evening.

Senior Azmar Abdullah led the way with a game-high 33 points, shooting seven three-pointers on the evening.

“He came ready to play. He hit his first shot, found his rhythm and his teammates found him. He had a great night, that’s the kind of player he is. He’s explosive and he can score multiple in a row from anywhere on the court,” said Hendricken coach Jamal Gomes after the win.

The Hawks jumped out to a 23-13 lead in the first quarter, 11 of which came from Abdullah, and never looked back. Eze Wali caught fire in the second quarter and would finish with 29 points for the Hawks as well, while point guard Mike Paquette scored nine and Marcus Sukkar seven. Sukkar got the start in place of Matt Brock, who is dealing with an injury.

East coach Isaiah McDaniel felt that his team’s defense did not play with enough urgency, especially when guarding Abdullah.

“Azmar is a great player. He hit the open shots tonight and I don’t think we did a good job contesting them. He didn’t have a hand in his face tonight and I think that contributed to it. He hit them, but we didn’t contest them,” said McDaniel.

Naz Milien led the Bolts with 24 points. Da’Qwon Foster scored 10 and Davian Berry eight.

“(Milien’s) going to be our scorer, most nights he is our leading scorer. He needs to do a little bit better of a job of getting other people involved when he can, but we’re looking for him to do a lot for us this year,” said McDaniel.

The Hawks improved to 3-0 on the season, and Gomes was pleased with the contributions from Wali and others, especially considering the absence of Brock and Devin Lynch, who is also dealing with injuries.

“Eze showed a lot of consistency throughout the game. From short range, mid range, finishing around the basket. (He and Abdullah) are two of the top players in the state and we’re very blessed and fortunate that they’re with us. Mike Paquette distributed the ball, got it to where it needed to be. I was very happy with Marcus, who played well on both defense and offense tonight,” said Gomes.

However, Gomes is expecting more from the Hawks’ defense, which had some trouble putting the game away in the third quarter.

“I wasn’t happy with the defense in the second half. Our goal is to give up 50 points or less and we did not do that so we talked about that after the game. We gave up 16 points in the third. It’s early in the season so we have some work to do. We are also trying to take those lulls in the game and shrink them. Extend the positives and shrink the lulls. We’ll get there,” said Gomes.

The Bolts dropped to 1-2 with the loss, and McDaniel hopes his team can regroup while riding its deep back court.

“Our guards are definitely the strength of our team. We don’t have much size, but we’ll go down and we’ll scrap and we’ll bang. We’re just trying to get better every day,” McDaniel said. “You have to take this with a grain of salt, it’s only the third game of the season. We’re 1-2, so all we can do is build on the loss and try to get better.”