“It feels better when we only play them once a year, especially on their home court,” he said. “We haven’t had a chance to play here yet, so the feeling is just surreal beating your rival on their home court right before Christmas. You couldn’t ask for a better Christmas present.”
Senior Holton Massie had a game-high 13 points as the Braves improved to 4-2 overall.
“(Kenton Ridge) has been playing well and although young, they’ve got good skilled kids,” said Shawnee coach Chris McGuire. “We knew it was going to be a challenge to keep them down. Scoring has been our challenge to start the year, but we just knew we had to defend. We had a game plan tonight. It helps that we have length and we try to utilize our length. The guys executed what we wanted to do and were able to hold them to 33 points when they’re averaging 61. I thought the guys did a great job.”
Kenton Ridge sophomore Brody Runkle led the Cougars (3-4) with eight points. Last season, the Cougars won the CBC Kenton Trail Division and advanced to a Division II district final game. They return two players from last year’s varsity squad — juniors Xavier White and Caleb Hall — and have just one senior in guard Zach Hanford.
“We’re definitely young,” said Kenton Ridge coach Brian Smith. “I don’t want to keep giving our guys an excuse. There’s things we’ve got to figure out that seniors understand that we’re just not yet. The effort is there, we’re playing extremely hard. We’ve lost a few tough ones here. I give credit to Shawnee, they play some really good defense. They haven’t been scoring a lot of points and we knew that, but we knew they would lock us down on D. We’ve got to get some things figured out. We’ve talked to the guys that no one is going to feel sorry. We had a really good year last year and a lot of people are coming after us and we’ve got to understand that.”
Shawnee grabbed an 11-9 lead at the end of the first quarter on a 3-pointer by Braves senior Luke Young. Kenton Ridge regained the lead early in the second quarter on a 3-pointer by the Cougars’ Trey Johnson, but Massie would score five straight points to give Shawnee an 18-15 halftime lead.
The Braves outscored Kenton Ridge 7-2 in the first five minutes of the third quarter to extend their lead to eight points at 30-22.
The Cougars went on an 11-2 run early in the fourth quarter, grabbing a 33-32 lead on a 3-pointer by Xavier White with about five minutes remaining.
“We hit a couple big shots there, we got some turnovers on them,” Smith said. “We turned the pressure up and did a much better job on defense tonight than we have been doing. (Shawnee) hit some big shots. They really did and some of them were not necessarily from some of the guys we expected.”
The Cougars, however, wouldn’t score again. Braves senior Kyle Dingeman gave Shawnee the lead on a layup and extended it to 36-34 on a breakaway dunk with about 35 seconds remaining.
White’s 3-point attempt from the left wing rimmed out and the Cougars were forced to start fouling with 10 seconds remaining to send Earles to the free throw line.
“I was pretty nervous, especially with the student sections being so loud, including ours which was kind of surprising,” Earles said. “I knew we had to just get it to four points, make it a two-possession game and then just miss the second one and just run off clock. We had to drain as much clock as possible and not give them any more shots.”
Earles sank the first one and intentionally missed the second, but the Braves were able to grab the rebound and he was fouled again. He made one more free throw to seal the Clark County rivalry game for Shawnee.
“He’s hit some big shots over his time, stepped up and did a great job getting the shots we needed and being strong with the ball to be able to get in that position and us taking care of it,” McGuire said. “The guys did a good job executing what we needed to do with the pressure and him knocking down the free throws were huge for us.”
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