'Riders down Rangers

NEW KNOXVILLE - A hot start allowed St. Marys to jump out to a big lead and cruise to its fifth win of the season in picking up a 51-34 win over Auglaize County neighbor New Knoxville on Friday at Ranger Gymnasium in boys basketball action.

St. Marys (5-2) jumped out to a 14-1 lead in the first quarter and was up as much as 28 points before the Rangers rallied to trim the lead to below 20 toward the end.

In the postgame, Roughriders coach Dan Hegemier was a bit disappointed with his team's play despite the win, while Rangers coach Mike Piatt was upbeat.

"We played about a half and a decent third quarter. That's it," said Hegemier. "Other than that, we didn't play well. The ball wasn't going in and our crispness passing the ball and getting people open wasn't good."

"I thought we got better tonight," said Piatt. "First half we missed seven layups. We make some layups and take care of the ball a little better, we'd be in the ballgame."

Taking advantage of height, St. Marys tried to get the ball inside to 6-8 freshman Austin Parks regularly to start the game, resulting in four early points before LeTrey Williams, Ethan Steger, Max Mielke and Jaden Davis added points during the early run. New Knoxville managed just a Carson Bierlein free throw and a Caleb Lageman layup for its three points in the first quarter.

St. Marys pulled away more in the second quarter to go up 27-11 at the half as New Knoxville was just 4-of-12 from the floor with nine turnovers. Williams got hot in the third quarter, scoring the first nine Roughrider points of the second half as St. Marys pushed past a 20-point lead to get within a bucket of being up 30 at 46-18.

The Rangers started trimming the deficit in the final 8 minutes as Bierlein started to find a rhythm, scoring 11 of his game-high 19 points to get the game a bit closer at the finish.

"I thought we played hard, battled them and we're getting better," said Piatt. "St. Marys is a very good team."

"We started getting stops and in the second half we stopped giving them the ball (reducing turnovers from 14 in the first half to seven in the second half)."

Williams scored 13 of his 15 points in the third quarter to lead St. Marys. Steger, Parks and Davis each added eight points with Parks pulling down 11 rebounds.

Both teams are back in action this afternoon. St. Marys makes the short trek north on State Route 66 to play Spencerville in a 4 p.m. JV start. New Knoxville is back home to face Botkins with the varsity game starting at 6:30 p.m.