Rangers, Wildcats set for another district championship rematch.
New Knoxville outlasts Marion Local; Wildcats rout Indians in semifinals
WAPAKONETA — One game was a blowout, the other was anything but. And the result was the same as the two prior seasons.
Minster will play in its sixth straight district championship after beating Fort Recovery 50-32 in the first game of Thursday’s girls basketball district tournament while a rematch from December turned into another physical and close affair as New Knoxville knocked out Marion Local in the second game with a 32-27 victory.
What Thursday’s semifinals set up is a third straight Division IV district championship between the Wildcats and the Rangers for 7 p.m. Saturday.
“We’ll see what happens,” Rangers coach Tim Hegemier said.
Minster (23-1) used the long game to pull away from the Indians in the first half while the second half turned into a physical, low-scoring 16 minutes.
“They came out in a triangle ... I was pleased with the fact that a couple of our kids did not hesitate and turn down jumpers when you are standing there wide open,” Wildcats coach Mike Wiss said. “... We tried to run a couple of sets, get people in different spots and continue to create motion and honestly, I think it got us some good looks.”
Minster led by just two, 6-4, halfway through the opening quarter, but Ella Mescher’s 3-pointer on an assist by Ivy Wolf propelled the Wildcats to end the quarter on a 5-0 run and an 8-3 advantage to lead 14-7.
Minster shot converted four of their five 3-pointers in a 3:12 duration from the end of the first quarter to a couple of minutes into the second quarter.
After Fort Recovery’s back-to-back buckets opened the second quarter, Minster jumped on the Indians with a 14-2 run to end the first half.
The Indians pulled within six, 17-11 at the 6:01 mark of the second quarter off a jumper from Alexis Wendel, but that was the last point Fort Recovery scored for the next 4:55 and the team’s final field goal of the first half.
Meanwhile, Minster’s ball movement created opportunities from long range.
Wolf connected on a 3-pointer with 9.3 seconds left in the first quarter to extend the lead to 14-7.
After missing the first four 3-pointers to open the second quarter, the Wildcats drained their next three, beginning with a Wolf-to-Corrine Meiring hookup for three followed a triple from Janae Hoying
to Mescher and Wolf concluded the runs of 3-pointers with her own to push the lead to 23-11.
Minster’s run didn’t stop there as Hoying found Mason Pohl for a bucket and Brynn Oldiges cleaned up a missed 3-pointer, feeding the ball to Meshcer for two. Wolf then connected on a jumper to culminate a 12-0 Minster run and following a turnover, a Wolf-to-Hoying connection for two with 1:00 remaining in the first half gave the Wildcats a 31-13 halftime lead as the Indians never pulled to closer than 13.
The later game between Marion Local and New Knoxville never grew more than seven points apart — with a good portion of the semifinal just a one-point game, but the Rangers did just enough to beat the Flyers a second time in 84 days.
Trailing in the game since the final minute of the second quarter, the Rangers took the lead for good with 1:39 remaining in the third quarter when Carsyn Henschen pulled down the rebound to keep the Rangers’ offensive possession alive and that offensive board led to Haley Fledderjohann finding a crease as the junior bolted up the middle of the paint and connected with the drive for a bucket to give New Knoxville a 24-23 lead.
That wasn’t the only impact Henschen made, however.
Still leading by just one heading to the fourth quarter, Ellie Gabel drove to the side of the basket and found Morgan Leffel, who lobbied the ball in to extend the Rangers’ lead to 26-23 with 6:49 left to go. On Marion Local’s ensuing possession, Henschen pulled down a rebound following a missed shot to keep the Flyers from getting a second-chance point — after the team notched five of them in the first half.
Two possessions later, Henschen snatched another board off a Flyers’ missed 3-pointer, which led to Avery Henschen atop of the key finding Gabel, who streaked from the backside past the defense for a layup. That bucket pushed the Rangers’ lead to 2823. Two possessions later, Leffel deposited two free throws for New Knoxville’s largest lead of the game, 30-23, with 3:53 remaining in regulation.
Marion Local got its first points of the quarter on Alana Pohlman’s two free throws and Sammy Hoelscher poked the ball away from Gabel on the Rangers’ next possession for a transition bucket to close the deficit to 30-27 with 2:30 remaining.
The score stayed that way for 2:35, including a missed shot by the Flyers that could have pulled the game to within one, but Henschen grabbed her third defensive rebound to ensure the lead remained at three.
But Marion Local would still tie the game after Gabel and Henschen both missed their one-andones with 6.4 seconds left. Coming out of back-toback timeouts, Nora Eckstein’s inbound pass was deflected by Henschen as she eventually corralled the ball in front of the Marion Local bench to seal the win.
“That’s huge when you’ve got a 6-foot-1 girl with long arms who can go up there and get that rebound,” Hegemier said of Henschen’s height. “That is so, so important, especially in a tight game like that.”
New Knoxville’s defense limited Marion Local to 2-of-16 shooting from the floor in the second half and limited the Flyers to three offensive boards, with just one of them yielding any points.
“They scored six and we scored 12 in the second half, you can’t ask for more than that,” Hegemier said. “I was surprised that they didn’t run more 22, kind of work it inside. Give my girls credit, they played hard and they wanted it bad. They got it.”