Second-half storm lifts Cardinals

FORT RECOVERY - With Carson Manger sidelined due to foul trouble in the first half, his New Bremen teammates remained cool enough under pressure to maintain a 35-26 cushion on Fort Recovery at intermission.

When Manger came back for the final half, he flat out took control.

The senior scored 27 points, including 12 during a 28-14 third-quarter run, and added seven rebounds as the Cardinals broke open a semi-close game for a 78-49 victory at Fort Site Fieldhouse.

"If he doesn't get in foul trouble, that's a whole night," said New Bremen coach Adam Dougherty of Manger. "He commits his second foul reaching instead of just being sound.

"(What he does) is within everything we do. It's not like he's doing stuff out of offense. He just plays really hard and he trusts his teammates and we share the ball. He knows it's going to come back to him in a good spot to score."

The Cardinals opened the third quarter on a 9-2 run and kept it rolling from there. They went a perfect 10-for-10 at the foul line and committed just two turnovers after totaling 14 in the first half against Fort Recovery's hounding full-court pressure.

Bremen blitzed out of the gate on fire, taking a 7-0 lead in the first two minutes of the game. A Manger tip-in gave his team its first double-digit advantage at 14-4. The Indians got going, though, cutting the lead to 18-10 before Kaelen Reed hit a shot from downtown and Nolan Fox, who had six points in the quarter, converted a layup to make the score 23-10 by the end.

But Fort Recovery recovered in the second quarter, cueing up some full-court pressure which led to some easy buckets. Darien Sheffer, pressuring the inbounds pass on the press, had a couple steals and scored five points in the quarter.

"I thought we played a pretty solid first half," Fort Recovery coach Chris Guggenbiller said. "We did a good job of attacking the cup and getting Manger in a little bit of foul trouble. When he's not in the game, they're a little bit of a different team. He's definitely the leader of that team. When he wasn't in there in the first half, we were really able to amp up the pressure and cause some havoc.

"Give credit to our guys there for working hard and wreaking havoc, particularly a kid like (Derek) Backs coming off the bench and really giving us that spark."

Micaiah Cox banked in a layup after a steal to trim the deficit to 25-18 with four minutes to play in the quarter. That was the closest the Indians got the rest of the way. New Bremen responded with a 7-2 run, capped by Reed's triple from the corner.

"A little bit of it was Carson going to the bench and them taking one of our best players off the floor," Dougherty explained. "Their pressure is pretty good. It's not like we're going against a bunch of stiffs. They tip it from behind. (Brandon) Schoen is really quick. When we were just sound with it, we were able to break it and attack the basket and do what we wanted to do."

And facing that same pressure in the second half, the Cardinals did exactly what they wanted to do.

Manger added a highlight reel dunk off a block to open the fourth quarter. Alex Britton scored 10 points, Fox and Reed netted eight apiece as Bremen improved to 6-3 and 2-1 in Midwest Athletic Conference play.

Sheffer led the way for the Indians with 13 and pulled down a team-high six rebounds. Chase Bruns and Cox scored eight points each. Fort Recovery plays at Lincolnview tonight.

"We learned from this game," Guggenbiller said. "We look at what we can build on. We go up north and play a good Lincolnview team (tonight). They've got a pretty good, six-foot bulky guard that we're going to have to make sure we keep in front of us and always make sure we know where he's at on the court.

"We just need to have a short memory. We need to be that closer in baseball who blew yesterday's save and is coming out and getting tonight's save and the next five."

The Cardinals celebrate 100 years of basketball tonight when they host Celina with a 6 p.m. JV start.