
Marion Local’s Grant Kremer connects for one of his six made three-pointers in the Flyers’ Friday win over New Bremen. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Three-point shooting led by junior Grant Kremer resurrected a sluggish Marion Local offense and guided the Flyers to their 13th win. Kremer knocked down six 3-pointers and led all scorers with 20.
By Alan Brads for Press Pros Magazine
Maria Stein, OH – Grant Kremer’s fourth and fifth 3-pointers on consecutive possessions iced the game for Marion Local Friday night with 7 minutes still left to play. He added a sixth for good measure before taking a seat and watching the clock dissolve into a 54-36 win over New Bremen (8-8, 2-4).
Kremer’s curtain call for his 20-point night was a nice callback to the first possession of the game, when he found a chink in the armor of the Cardinals’ 2-3 zone and knocked down his first 3-ball.
“We had the kick-out 3s going against the zone,” Kremer said. “Once we got those going it really gave us confidence.”

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But not everything that happened in between was quite as pretty for Marion (13-1, 4-1). In fact, to the Flyer faithful, the first quarter was downright ugly.
Marion scored two points the rest of the period, and rebounding lapses allowed an inefficient New Bremen offense the extra chances to take a 10-5 lead at the end of the first quarter.
New Bremen’s 2-3 zone that extends to the half-court line paralyzed Marion’s guards and forced six turnovers in the first quarter. Gavin Quellhorst and Gavin Dicke spearhead the 2-3 zone and lead the MAC at #1 and #2 in steals. But they didn’t have to work overtime to find takeaways, or more accurately, giveaways, in the first quarter. It was confidence, not intensity, that the Flyers lacked.
“I thought the effort was fine the whole game.” Marion Local Coach Kurt Goettemoeller said. “When you see a zone like that in the first half it just freezes you a little bit. We haven’t seen a matchup zone like that all year and it stagnated us for a half.
The flustered guards struggled to feed the ball to the most obvious mismatch on the court, and Austin Niekamp went scoreless for the quarter.
“It’s different playing a team that’s always working on the 2-3 and playing a 2-3,” Niekamp said. “We just had to get used to the game.”

New Bremen’s Gavin Quellhorst helped keep the Cardinals close in the first half.
Progress for the Flyer offense was slow and steady. In the second quarter it often remained motionless enough to collect bits of algae. But they finally generated some looks for Niekamp around the basket, and Kremer chipped in a pair of triples. More importantly, they stemmed turnover hemorrhaging. That wound healed over after the first quarter, and never cracked back open. They had just four turnovers the rest of the game, and most of those were hard-earned by New Bremen’s quick-fingered guards.
The Flyers’ immobility on offense and newfound high appraisal of the basketball combined for lengthy possessions, which, coupled with good defense and improved rebounding, held New Bremen to seven points in the second quarter, and handed Marion a 24-17 halftime lead.
Marion’s offense rediscovered its identity in the third quarter, and leaned heavily on Niekamp. Having been double-teamed early and often on the inside, he ventured out to the three-point line and knocked down two jumpers. Dylan Dirksen added another three. Now facing the threat of other hot shooters in addtion to Kremer, New Bremen’s zone had too many plates to juggle.
“When those shots started falling it made things a lot easier by opening things up on the inside and the high post,” said Niekmap, who tallied 12 points in the third quarter.
“We just got more movement in the second half,” Goettemoeller said. “We told some of our kids the ball was sticking at halftime. We were holding it too long. When we got more movement the kids got a little more confident … And did what we were supposed to do on the glass in the last three quarters. We’re the bigger stronger team and we took over on the glass.”

Marion Local’s Brayden Mescher eyes a loose ball during the first half of Friday’s win over New Bremen.
New Bremen’s sputtering offense got a brief kickstart from Quellhorst sinking three difficult shots, but Marion’s buckets were coming far easier, and the Cardinals couldn’t keep up.
“We liked our matchup defensively,” Goettemoeller said. “Honestly I feel like we could have even guarded a little bit better. We gave up a few easy baskets in the first half that we didn’t like. But overall we guarded pretty well.”
Entering the last quarter down 41-29, the Cardinals desperately needed a spark, instead they got a trifeca of bombs dropped on them by Kremer to send them flying back home after a 54-36 loss.
Kremer led all scorers with 20, Niekamp followed with 19, Ahrens with 12, and Dirksen with 3. The mathematically inclined will notice those figures add up to 54 – the lack of ball movement for a half resulted in only four Flyers staking a claim on the scoreboard.
Quellhorst led the way for New Bremen with 13, and Dicke followed with 7.
New Bremen has only six games left of its regular season to find ways to create four quarters of havoc instead of just one.

Marion Local’s Austin Niekamp warmed up from three-point range to finish with 19 points.
The consensus was pretty clear among the Marion players and coaches – they played good enough. But good enough won’t always be good enough. They played better against Delphos St. John’s and still got a nick in their perfect record.
“I think that loss – I don’t know if I’d say it was great for us – but it made us see what we needed to work on and we got back to work,” Kremer said.
Coach Goettemoeller said he’d give his team’s defensive performance a B or B-. That grade could probably be applied to much of what they did. It worked. It got a comfortable W, and that’s not nothin’. But B-minuses don’t win you valedictorian either.
The 1-loss Flyers still have nine more chances to earn an A in the regular season. And they may need an A’s with opponents including Jackson Center, St. Henry, Coldwater, Minster, and Russia.
And if all else fails, maybe, just maybe, Grant Kremer’s A+ 3-ball can cover a multitude of B’s.

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