The Flyers made it tough…Brennen Hess gets a hand on the shot attempt of Anna’s A.J. Barhorst during Friday’s 57-35 Flyer win. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Marion Local held Anna to less than 40% shooting and just 16 points in the second half. And if defense really does travel, Kurt Goettemoeller’s Flyers could well be on another journey in 2026.
Maria Stein, OH – It took the Marion Local Flyers nearly 24 minutes to heat up offensively in their 57-35 win over non-con foe Anna Friday night, and afterward Flyers coach Kurt Goettemoeller hardly seemed upset.
After all, if teams don’t make shots, turn the ball over, and you hold them to less than 40% from the floor, you can take all the time you want to score.
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And with one exception, that’s what last year’s Division VI state runners-up have done through their first six games, defeating visiting Anna of the Shelby County League 57-35 Friday to run their record to 6-0, and without coming close to playing their best basketball…yet!
Yet?
The Flyers scored the first seven points of the game against Anna, ran out to a 10-2 lead, and then watched as the visiting Rockets went on a 11-2 run to take a 13-12 lead with less than a minute left in the opening quarter. Marion’s Grant Kremer threw in a ‘tear drop’ at the buzzer to salvage the first eight minutes, 14-13.
Then, Luke Everman made a three at the start of the second, led Marion scorers with five points in the quarter, and the Flyers’ defense began to assert itself. They held Anna to just six points, about 25% shooting for the next eight minutes, and eked out a 25-19 halftime lead as Marion would outscore the Rockets 11-6.
Can I give you guys a hand…Marion’s Grant Kremer disrupts things for Anna’s Rhylan Platfoot (left) and Logan Ziegenbusch.
Everman and Kremer would both begin to warm to the task in the third quarter, each hitting a three-pointer in succession as part of a 6-0 run to end the quarter, and extend their margin to 40-28 to begin play for the final eight minutes.
Then Everman, Brennan Hess, and Oliver Huelsman each canned three-pointers in the final eight minutes as Marion outscored Anna 17-6, putting the Rockets away with a 32-16 second half spurt that may have revealed their hand as they head into the heart of their January schedule, beginning with a very good Division V Jonathan Alder team on Saturday night.
Scouting report: This team can defend and rough up opponents until they finally make a few shots. And the hope is…by the time they do it’s all over.
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And in fact, Friday’s game was grounds for an EMT truck outside the gymnasium door because officials Asa Donaldson, Mitch Oen, and Steve Oren pretty much decided that they weren’t going to miss the Gutfeld Show. They allowed about as much contact as you can allow without calling it rugby, while Goettemoeller and Anna coach Nate Barhorst finally resigned themselves to the fact that January was the official start of martial arts basketball season.
You would think there’d be some contact in there someplace…but no. Anna’s defense turned away the shot attempt of Marion’s Brayden Mescher.
“It was rough,” smiled Goetteomoeller, afterward. “But we like to think that we play well through contact like that. And when our defense gets locked in like it did, especially off the ball…and Anna runs a really good motion offense…I thought we did a pretty good job on defense against them, overall. Anna is going to get better and better, like they did last year, and with their size they’re going to be a very good basketball team with the more they play.”
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His summation of the game matched the scorebook almost to the minute. By the time the defense had secured its chokehold on Anna’s offense, Marion’s shooters – Luke Everman, Brayden Mescher, and Grant Kremer – had begun to find the range in the final ten minutes of the game. They finished things with a flourish, with a 13-3 run while hitting three of five from behind the arc. Everman, who led them in scoring with 16 points, would finish the game having hit four of his seven shots from three-point range (57%).
Marion’s Luke Everman gets to the rim for two of his game-high 16 points in Friday’s win over Anna.
“You know we haven’t shot the ball that well yet,” added Goettemoeller. “And tonight we finally began to shoot like we can. We’ve been around 18 to 20% from three-point range, and tonight their game plan was to pack the paint with their big bodies and make us shoot it from out there.
“Luke Everman finally got untracked. He’s a really good shooter, he’s put a ton of work into it, and he’s been struggling. But tonight he made four three’s for us, he’s getting more confident, and he really came up big. If he can shoot the ball like that it makes us that much tougher to guard.”
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Everman led all scorers with 16 points, while Brayden Mescher finished with 13, Brennan Hess had 9 and Grant Kremer had 8. Marion shot 43% from the floor, and their defense held Anna to 34% shooting from the floor and turned the Rockets over 17 times.
For Anna, Logan Ziegenbusch led with 11 points, Rhylan Platfoot had 8, and A.J. Barhorst and Brady Wenning each finished with 7. Anna’s defense turned Marion over nine times.
Of course, there’s two sides to every story and down the hall Nate Barhorst was looking for some silver lining to his team’s 3-4 start.
“They didn’t call much, and we knew going in that it was going to be a blood bath,” said Barhorst, well-conditioned from playing Marion Local over the years. “But they played like they play. They’re aggressive in the passing lanes, and I thought we did a decent job in the first half with going back-door, hitting guys slipping to the rim…but then in the second half their length and size – their physicality – just got to us and things spiraled out of control.
“They hit those three-pointers there in the fourth quarter and that kinda’ broke them loose. And from some guys that don’t normally hit three-pointers, like Oliver Huelsman. You know what Kremer, and Everman, and Mescher are going to do, but when they start hitting them with the other guys…it boils down to you have to dig deeper.”
Marion and Goettemoeller will get the timing and sequence of things tested more over the next week with their Saturday matchup against Jonathan Alder, and then another tough non-conference date with unbeaten Botkins, at Botkins, next Tuesday night. Phil Groves’ Trojans are averaging just 35 points allowed during the course of their 7-0 start.
“We’re just trying to go 1-0 every night,” said Goettemoeller Friday, in classic ‘coach-speak’ vernacular. “We’re getting into the teeth of our schedule and we’ll find out how good we are here over the next couple of weeks. It’ll be a good test for us.”
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