Junior Andrew Elwer led all scorers with 23 points in the Blue Jays 75-58 win Monday over unbeaten St. Clairsville. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Not the one you’d expect, but a kid named Elwer poured in 23 points to power Dephos St. John past unbeaten St. Clairsville in Monday’s Columbus Holiday Hoopla showcase in downtown Columbus.
Columbus, OH – You don’t expect a player named Elwer, besides Furman-bound Cameron Elwer, to shoot lights out and be the scoring difference in a Delphos St. John basketball game.
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And you especially don’t expect it against one of the better Division V teams in eastern Ohio – one who can hold its own with a 6’7″ scoring asterisk named Griffin Straub, who’ll play his college basketball next year at Indiana University – Pennsylvania…the hometown, for the unknowing, of legendary film icon, actor Jimmy Stewart.
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But Monday, in the Columbus Holiday Hoopla high school basketball showcase, Andrew Elwer, the junior brother of Cameron, led all scorers with 23 points in a 75-58 Delphos St. John win – a veritable clinic by both teams on how good high school basketball teams play the game.
“We proved that everyone on this team can make a play today,” said junior Andrew Elwer. “Everyone is willing to make the extra pass, and we did that because they concentrated on Cam. We showed that we can all make a play – all of us – against a good team.”
Tied 13-13 at the end of the first quarter, Delphos St. John took its first lead early in the second quarter on a Cam Elwer feed to brother Andrew, who split the St. Clairsville defense running downcourt in transition and beat two defenders to the rim.
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And from that point, the Blue Jays would feast on scoring with their up-tempo play, points in transition, and their ability to make the extra pass in their halfcourt offense. Accustomed to scoring with the three-point shot, Monday they settled for layups and making open looks from twelve to fifteen feet.
They hit their share of 3s, but Cam Elwer and the Jays beat St. Clairsville with layups and shots from 12 to 15 feet.
At the end of 16 minutes Andrew had 15 points…Cam had 11…and the Blue Jays owned the scoreboard with a 38-23 lead, along with the respect of St. Clairsville coach Ryan Clifford.
“We’re pretty good,” said Clifford, afterwards. “But they’re obviously better. It helps to have guys in the same family, but they really share the basketball well. I thought we did an outstanding job on Cam, but to his credit he never forced it. He made the extra play and they’re almost impossible to guard when he does that.
Pausing, he added, “They guard, and they shoot it, and they’ll be making a deep run in the tournament, I assume.”
To Clifford’s point, Delphos caught fire after shooting 5 of 16 in the first quarter, and 0-7 from three-point range…by shooting 9 of 12 in the second and 4 of 6 from behind the arc.
Halftime did little more than sharpen their commitment to team basketball – sharing the ball, defense, rebounding, and always, always making the extra play. By the end of the third quarter Delphos had swelled its lead to 26 points (58-32), and coach Aaron Elwer began subbing in his interchangeable parts.
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“It was good to come out against another good team from a different part of the state,” said Cam Elwer. “There’s a saying about being comfortable in an uncomfortable situation and overcoming that. And in the first five or six minutes we missed some shots we usually make, but we overcame that with our culture and team play.
Delphos’ Aidan Swick beats a St. Clair defender to the rim during Monday’s win in the Hoopla showcase in Columbus.
“And I’m super proud of that because we’ve been working on it since we were young tykes – working on it every day around my dad. We’ve just continued to build on it year after year and like I said, we’re super proud of it.”
The ‘culture’ twice led to 26-point advantages in the third quarter before St. Clairsville and Griffin Straub began to chip away at the Blue Jay lead against players off the bench. They got it as close as 14 points, but when the Delphos starters came back for a cameo look in the fourth quarter things settled down and St. Clairsville began to get its own subs into the game minutes before the 75-58 conclusion.
They’d seen enough!
Box score highlights…Andrew Elwer led all scorers with his 23, Cam Elwer finished with 17, Tyce McClain and Easton Elwer each had 10 to pace the Blue Jays, who improved to 6-0.
For St. Clairsville Griffin Straub finished with 15 points to lead the Red Devils, who suffered their first defeat of the year – now 5-1.
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“I think it’s good to put your program in an uncomfortable spot, because there’s going to be uncomfortable situations throughout the season,” said Aaron Elwer. “It happened Friday night at Coldwater when they came out to a great start and that was the first time we’d felt that feeling this year.
“It’s a tournament setting, and it’s a different environment and these are things that coaches think about. These are experiences that we can draw from. And I think we’re going to get better going forward by playing in a different environment against a team we didn’t know a lot about. We were a little slow at the start, but midway through the first quarter and to the end I think we played like the team we are. You depend on the things that travel…your culture, defense, rebounding…and those things all worked for us today.”
The floor was ringed by basketball coaches and scouts, no doubt looking for something they themselves can draw from in the near future. It’s fortifying for some, coaches and teams alike, to reinforce what you think you know; shocking for others to face the reality of what they don’t know.
For the Elwers, and the Blue Jays, they left knowing this, that team basketball always travels, regardless of who you play. Regardless of the environment.
And for those who watched, it gave them something to think about – eyes opened. Like Ryan Clifford, they left the Convention Center Monday knowing that Delphos St. John is not only good, but good enough to make a deep run in the tournament.
Too bad Jimmy Stewart had to miss it.
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