It was all downhill from here for South as Tri-Village scored at will from inside and outside the paint en route to a 75-27 rout of Twin Valley South. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Brian Bayless)
Slow starts proved insignificant for Anna and Tri-Village in their first tournament games. Anna’s 3rd quarter rampage earned a 61-33 win over National Trail, and Tri-Village dusted Twin Valley South 75-27
Troy, OH –Tournament time. There’s just one goal. Survive and advance. But is that always true of every tournament game?
Tri-Village and Anna both survived and advanced at Troy High School on Friday night, but they did more than that. They dominated their first postseason games, Tri-Village over Twin Valley South 75-27 and Anna over National Trail 61-33.
Of course the goal is always to reach the next round, but when survival and advancement are virtually guaranteed, what other edge can be gained?
Anna gained a much-needed respite after consecutive overtime wins.
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“In the last six-game stretch, three of those games went to overtime,” Anna Coach Nate Barhorst said. “Gladly, they’ve all gone in our favor, and it’s good to be challenged like that too. But we needed a game where we could just break loose and seal the deal.”
Anna came out slow and couldn’t quite bury National Trail until a 21-2 third quarter laid the Blazers to rest.
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The Rockets’ win streak now extends to seven, and they didn’t even need overtime to do it.
Tri-Village, like Anna, struggled to play to its own standard early. Through a quarter and a half, the Patriots looked like a team unaccustomed to postseason basketball, which they are. But a 13-0 run to finish the second quarter commenced the razing of Twin Valley South.
“First tournament games are an adjustment for kids,” Tri-Village Coach Josh Sagester said. “We don’t have a lot of experience with tournament basketball. But we got better as the game went on. We were able to get some flow and create some turnovers that allowed us to get into transition.”
Tri-Village is on a nine-game win streak but without all the drama of Anna’s February. The Patriots average a 31-point margin of victory since their last loss on January 19. In fact, they’ve played in just one close game all year, a 66-60 loss to Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy in the season opener.
Griffin Richards and the Patriots ran away from Mason Crews and his South squad during a lopsided win at Troy High School.
The advantage gained is more running clocks, fewer injuries, and less wear and tear. The drawback is fewer reps for the starters and a lack of crunch time experience. They’ll have to win close ones to get back to the championship game and avenge a title game loss in 2022. That’s not to say the team is unprepared to win a close game, only that it’s impossible to know if they are or not.
It’s easy for teams like Anna and Tri-Village to blast through teams they can outgun, but how you win matters. Playing with bad discipline and fundamentals against National Trail and Twin Valley South might affect how you play later down the line.
That line may include a matchup between the Rockets and Patriots in the regional semifinals at Vandalia Butler High School.
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But first, they have to take care of business at Troy High School and win a district title. Anna’s path includes a date with Miami Valley on Tuesday, and then the winner of Riverside and Fort Recovery for the district title. Plainly, Anna has the superior athletes and ought to win the district. Anything less would be a disappointment, and they’ll be the first to say it.
Tri-Village sophomore big man Dom Black made his presence known early in the first quarter with dominant play in the lane.
Tri-Village has the tougher route. First facing 13th seeded Triad, expect another running clock there, but then playing the winner of Felicity-Franklin and Cincinnati Country Day.
If the Rockets and Patriots take care of business through districts, expect a fast-paced thriller in Vandalia. Both teams will press early and often.
Tri-Village’s Trey Sagester is the best player on the court nearly every time he steps onto it. But there’s an argument to be made Anna has a more balanced starting five and has undeniably faced stiffer competition throughout the season.
Tri-Village tipped off the first game at 6 p.m. and played a touch sloppy first the first 12 minutes. Still, it captured a 29-18 lead, but it could’ve been upward of a 20-point margin by then if they played to their potential early.
“We hadn’t played in a while (six days) so we came out kinda slow,” sophomore Dom Black said. “We just gotta get fired up in the future, we didn’t have enough energy coming into this game but we will in the next few.”
The Patriots leaned offensively not on Sagester, the WOAC’s leading scorer, but rather on Black, the 6’6” forward. The mismatch down low was impossible to miss, even for an untrained eye. Black’s overpowering stature helped build a lead even before the ball movement and half-court offense tightened up.
Twin Valley South’s Aiden White goes hard to the rim, but the night belonged to Tri-Village as they held South to 27 points overall, and just 7 in the second half.
Black scored 14 in the first half, including six during his team’s 13-0 run to close the half, and in a sense, the game.
“We just played them, so I kinda knew how they were going to play the post,” Black said. “They played a 1-3-1 and they had the smallest guy down there. So it was a mismatch for me.”
Tri-Village also dominated the rebounding battle, covering up some of the early shooting inefficiencies.
A 44-20 halftime deficit would’ve prevented even the Panthers’ best second-half performance from mounting a comeback. And their best was nowhere to be seen. Tri-Village allowed just seven points in the second half, turning gallons of turnovers into bushels of points.
A running clock mercifully ended the 75-27 onslaught. Trey Sagester led Tri-Village with 19 points, Black scored 17, all from the low post and free throw line, and Griffin Richards scored 14. For TVS Griffin Roell put up 12, and Aidan White tacked on eight.
In a deja vu moment, Anna came out flat in the first half, while still steadily mounting a lead due to the talent and athleticism disparity. National Trail giveaways gave Alex Shappie three easy baskets in the first half, and the Rockets took a 31-18 lead to the locker room.
National Trail’s Kellen Laird puts up a floater over Anna defender Brady Wenning.
Anna dialed the turnover machine up to 100% in the third quarter, playing rock-solid defense that turned into quick buckets on the other end. A 21-2 third quarter boosted the lead to 52-20, and the starters got some much-needed rest during the fourth quarter.
“At halftime we talked about being more aggressive and playing harder on defense,” Shappie said. “That’s what we did and defense started turning into offense which got us clicking. It all starts with ball pressure and getting in passing lanes. That’s what gets us into transition and opens everything up.”
The B-squad couldn’t quite tip the running-clock scale, so they played eight minutes with stoppages until the horn blared with 61-33 Anna on the board.
“The first half was a little rocky,” Barhorst said. “We just couldn’t settle ourselves in. I don’t know if it was just the atmosphere … but we need to come in and fire on all cylinders early.”
Anna’s offensive style manifested with 10 players in the scoring column. Shappie led with 13, then Brady Wenning, 12, and Jacob Feroze and Blake Bixler, eight apiece,
Brancin Mowen scored 13 for National Trail, followed by Daniel Turpin with eight and Tayden Blevins with seven.
Both Anna and Tri-Village should be well rested by Tuesday when they each have one more game with high blowout potential. And then it begins … The part of the tournament where you can say the objective is truly singular: Survive and advance.
It appeared to be a clean block from behind on the shot attempt by Anna’s Jacob Feroze, but the officials disagreed with the crowd’s opinion and called the foul.
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