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Marion Local's Kyle Otte chases down a loose ball in front of St. Henry's Luke Beyke as Daniel Everman (4) and Mitchell Ranly (22) look on in the final minute of the Division IV district semifinals in Wapakoneta on Tuesday.
WAPAKONETA - After avenging two earlier losses to St. Henry Tuesday night, Marion Local has to go through Lima Central Catholic on Friday to defend its district title.
The Thunderbirds raced past New Bremen for a 65-50 win in the opener, while the Flyers dominated on the glass and defense for a 51-41 victory in the Division IV boys basketball district semifinals in Wapakoneta.
Marion (12-13) will take on LCC (23-2), which has only lost to Midwest Athletic Conference champion St. John's and Spencerville, at 7 p.m. Friday.
"They're so good offensively, and on the other side of the ball, they're smart defenders," Marion coach Kurt Goettemoeller said. "They've got a guy over there that's won a state championship (coach Sean Powell, who took Botkins to the title in 2021), so they know how to win. It's going to be a fun matchup."
The Flyers kept St. Henry (18-6) away from the rim much of the night and won on the boards, while the Redskins struggled to hit makable shots.
Jack Knapke got Marion on the board first, then tapped an offensive rebound to Austin Niekamp for a corner 3-pointer to put the Flyers up 5-0 in the first 65 seconds. Knapke added four more points and Grant Kremer hit a trey with two minutes left in the first to stretch the lead to seven.
Marion outrebounded St. Henry 14-5 in the first quarter, including six offensive boards. All told, the Flyers pulled down 33 rebounds to the Redskins' 25.
"In the end, that's what it came down to," St. Henry coach Eric Rosenbeck said, "and quite frankly, it was right up there on our whiteboard before the game. We talked about it for three days. Whoever wins the glass wins the game between these two teams."
Luke Beyke hit a turnaround jump shot to get the Redskins within five a minute into the second quarter, but they missed two 3-pointers before Niekamp found Mitchell Ranly cutting to the basket for a layup to make it 18-11. Carter LaGuire's shot on the other end rolled off, and Knapke hit two free throws.
Two minutes later, Niekamp got the ball at the top of the key and fired a trey that rattled home to make it 23-11 with three minutes left in the half.
Curtis Puthoff and Evan Bowers hit threes to cut the deficit to eight at halftime, and Caden Bergman got a layup 37 seconds into the third to make it a seven-point game. Knapke converted an old-fashioned 3-point play and got two layups before picking up his third foul and going to the bench for the rest of the quarter.
Marion's defense stymied St. Henry for over three minutes as the lead stretched to 14, but Bowers and Beyke brought the Redskins to life, and Logan Link hit a 3-pointer with a minute left in the third to bring them back within eight.
St. Henry forced three turnovers early in the fourth, Marion took just two shots in five minutes, and Link swished a trey with 3 1/2 minutes left to make it 43-38.
Marion Local's Jack Knapke tries to block a shot by St. Henry's Carter LaGuire.
Kremer found Knapke open under the basket for a dunk with 2:41 to go, snapping a scoring drought of 3:29 and a field goal drought of 5:03.
"We said early in the game, 'We're going to make this a simple game,' " Goettemoeller said. " 'We're not going to try to get cute with them. We're going to get the ball down there and make some hay, and let everybody else feed off of him.' "
Knapke stole the ball on the other end, and Everman made it an eight-point game again from the line.
Marion missed four straight free throws and Boeckman hit a trey to cut it back to five, but the Flyers got one more play when it counted. A deflected pass went over Beyke's shoulder and Otte gathered up the loose ball, then drew a foul just before he lost it out of bounds.
Otte hit both free throws with 30.8 seconds left to seal the win.
"You have to have some composure," Goettemoeller said. "Kyle Otte stepped up and hit some big free throws when we needed it, and it went from five to seven.
"We were in 'no-3s' defense at that point, they've got to make tough 2s," he continued. "That's our mantra: the other team's got to make tough 2s. They've got to shoot it over our size."
It's a far cry from where the Flyers were at the turn of the year, when they lost 76-66 an 63-54 to St. Henry in the span of a week.
Tuesday night, Marion's 2-3 zone held the Redskins to 31% shooting from the field and 27% beyond the arc.
Link, a senior, led the Redskins with nine points, with Beyke and Bowers scoring eight and seven, respectively.
Bergman, Delzeith, Boeckman, Puthoff and Dominic Schwartz also played their final game for St. Henry on Tuesday.
"Reminded me of the 1990 Reds, my favorite team I ever had the privilege to be a fan of," Rosenbeck said. "Cast of characters that was just so much fun to be around. Not to go to practice tomorrow is crushing."
New Bremen's Jackson Lennartz goes to the basket between two Lima Central Catholic defenders.
A slow start on offense proved costly for the Cardinals, who fell behind by 11 in the first quarter and couldn't come all the way back.
The Thunderbirds turned five first quarter turnovers into an 11-4 lead, then added on with lights-out shooting against New Bremen's zone. Jordan Priddy swished a corner trey to make it 16-7 with 1:40 left in the first quarter, then hit another early in the second to stretch the lead to make it 21-11.
He canned his third with 4 1/2 minutes left in the half, capping LCC's 4-for-6 start from deep.
"The Priddy kid shoots about 40% from the 3-point line on the year," New Bremen coach Cory Stephens said. "We knew coming in, if he had a good look and his feet were set, more times than not, it's probably going to go in. We got in scramble situations a couple times where our angles weren't the best, and they did a good job finding their guy when he had the hot hand."
Billy Bourk hit a turnaround jumper and Carson Parker found Willie Foster for an alley-oop dunk to make it 30-14 with two minutes left in the half before the Cardinals made a run.
Jackson Lennartz drained a 3-pointer 30 seconds later, Aaron Thieman knocked down a triple, and after an LCC bucket, Lennartz hit from deep again to cut the lead to seven at the break.
"We got better when we started cutting all the way through to the hoop," Stephens said. "Cutting to the X, as we call it. We did better when we started screening, too, running our off-ball screens. At first we didn't do it as much, but when we started to do it, we got the defense to move a little bit more to the help side rather than just staying spot-to-spot."
That was the high-water mark for New Bremen, though. DeMarr Foster hit a trey in transition to get the lead back to 12 two minutes into the third quarter, and LCC matched every bucket from there.
Lennartz knocked down his third trey 35 seconds into the fourth quarter to cut the deficit to 11, and after Billy Bourk hit two free throws, Hayden Zeller added a trey to get New Bremen within 10 with six minutes to go.
New Bremen's Hayden Zeller shoots against LCC's Angelo Collins on Tuesday.
Parker found Priddy for a layup to beat the press and Willie Foster stole the ball and scored on the breakaway to stymie the Cardinals' last run.
"When they needed to, they stepped up and got a stop and made a bucket to stop our run," Stephens said. "I thought our effort was there, our fight was there."
Priddy scored a game-high 17 points, Willie Foster had 13, and Parker and DeMarr Foster added 11 apiece.
In their final game for New Bremen, Lennartz led the way with 15 points and seven rebounds and Thieman and Zeller each scored 12 points.
"I told these seniors, this is now three out of four years they've made a trip to Wapak for the district," Stephens said. "That's now the expectation and the standard."
