“I think that was in the back of the minds of all of our players tonight,” said Irish senior Zac Thompson. “It’s a new year, new us. We really wanted to go out and compete with that team.”
Thompson scored 25 points as the Irish overcame a 12-point second half deficit to beat the Indians 52-49 in an Ohio Heritage Conference South Division game on Friday night at Cedarville High School.
Irish junior Berkeley Little scored 13 points as first-place Catholic Central improved to 6-3 and 5-1 in the OHC South. With the victory, the Irish took a two-game lead on both Greenon (4-6, 4-4) and Greeneview (3-6, 3-3) in the OHC South title race. Catholic Central last won the title three years ago.
“For us, it’s about handling adversity, growing as a team, learning and being coachable,” said Irish coach Matt Mullen. “They were really coachable today. During our timeouts, we were talking about where we wanted the ball and everybody knew where it was going. We were using different sets to get it there and being really unselfish.”
Indians juniors Brett Haemmerle and Will Mossing each had 10 points for Cedarville, which fell to 5-6 and 3-4 in the OHC South.
“I was really proud of our guys,” said Indians coach Ryan Godlove. “I thought we executed our game plan offensively and defensively most of the time tonight. I thought the guys played confident and aggressive. We’ve got a young team and we know we’re not going to play perfect basketball, but something we’ve tried to hit on recently has been to make aggressive mistakes. If we’re going to make mistakes, let’s do it aggressively. I thought we did that most of the game.”
The Irish jumped out to an early 9-2 lead, but a 23-4 run gave the Indians a 25-13 lead midway through the second quarter. The Irish fought back to cut the lead to 27-24 at the half.
The Indians went on another run to start the third quarter. A 3-pointer by sophomore Micah Burr gave Cedarville another 12-point advantage at 40-28 midway through the quarter.
Central junior Keegan Guenther, a 6-foot-4 post player, entered the game averaging 16.3 points per game, but the Indians held him scoreless in the first half. Trailing by 12 for the second time in the game, Guenther scored eight points in the second half and gave his team the lead at 51-49 with 1:31 remaining.
Thompson hit a free throw to give the Irish a 3-point lead. Cedarville had a chance to tie the game in the final seconds, but Mossing’s 3-point attempt rimmed out.
The key down the stretch, Mullen said, was turning up the intensity on defense.
“Relentless has kind of been our moniker this year and I felt like in the second half, our defense was relentless,” Mullen said.
Thompson scored 14 points in the first half, hitting two 3-pointers. He also scored 25 points in Catholic Central’s previous game at Greeneview.
“They face guarded Keegan all night, so that left me open,” Thompson said. “Going into halftime, we didn’t make that many 3s, so the paint was the way we were going to win the game. It just worked out and shots went in.”
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