Cole Albers was one of six Wildcats to sink a triple. He led all scorers with 20 points. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Logan Howard)
“If we’re gonna hit 11 threes around Cole Albers, that’s gonna be tough to beat,” Minster coach Mike McClurg said after his team was too tough for Coldwater in the season finale.
Minster, OH – For teams with deep tournament aspirations, the end of the regular season is just midterms. Your first semester’s done, but the biggest exams lie ahead. In Minster’s final regular-season showing, class was in session.
The Wildcats got an A+ in Intro to Elasticity – that is to say, bouncing back.
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After an ugly loss to Marion Local last week, the Wildcats needed some good mojo heading into the tournament. So they put on a masterclass.
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The syllabus looked something like this:
Unit One: Have six players sink 11 threes.
Unit Two: Let your 6-foot-8 monster go to work in the post.
Unit Three: Wreak havoc on your opponents’ guards.
Minster’s clinic led to a 59-47 win over Coldwater to finish its season with a 15-7 record.
“Shooting like that makes my job so much easier,” the 6-foot-8 Minster monster Cole Albers said. “It opens everything up on the court. Inside, outside, all around, transition – it speeds the other team up, and that helps us.”
More performances like that, and the Division VII No. 3 Wildcats just might dance their way down I-75.
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“Our goal is to make it to Dayton this year,” Albers said. “We haven’t made it to state in over 20 years. So I guess this is our best shot right here. And we got the guys, we got the hard work, we got the effort. We can make it happen.”
The journey to Dayton – the final exam – begins on Thursday with a home game against Lima Temple Christian (12-10).
Cole McClurg’s hook shot escapes the Jack Bruns’ massive wingspan, but Bruns’ presence forces a miss.
“I know they play a lot of zone,” Minster coach Mike McClurg said. “So we gotta be ready for that. And they got a couple of really good players. So we’re gonna get ready this week.”
A win would send them to Elida Fieldhouse to face the winner of New Knoxville and Upper Scioto Valley.
Coldwater finished its season 9-12, and 3-6 in the MAC.
“We’ve lost five in a row,” Coldwater coach Will Hoskins said. “So obviously that’s not great. Now we’ve played some veteran teams, and we’ve played well enough to win, we just haven’t gotten over the hump.”
The fifth-seeded Cavs will travel an hour and 45 minutes to play three seed Archbold next Friday.
“Luckily we’ve got a lot of film on them,” Hoskins said. “We’ve been watching them … they’re a good team. They started out the season really well. They’re kinda like us. They’ve been up and down, and have been struggling in the second half of the season as we are. So I think it’s a good matchup.”
They hope to be the latest of many MAC teams to outperform their record and make more noise than their seed line would suggest.
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To do that, they’ll have to defend better than they did against Minster.
“Defense, we’ve got a lot to clean up,” Hoskins said. “It felt like we were a bunch of individuals instead of a team tonight.”
Minster’s whip-around ball movement left the Cavalier defense disjointed, allowing for open threes early and often. The ‘Cats shot Coldwater out of the zone, which allowed Albers to slide down from the high post and operate in the low post.
Beckham Stephey flies to the rim after collecting a steal. He scored 11 points
Albers led all players with 20 points. He’s the MAC’s most efficient scorer, and proved it again by shooting 70% from the field.
Beckham Stephey added 11 points with three threes, Andrew Ketner scored 10, all in the second half, and Taylor Fancher dropped eight off the bench. All three of those guards added game-changing value defensively.
“We just moved the ball around really well,” Stephey said. “We always made the extra pass and all our guys were able to knock it down.”
Landon Knapke led Coldwater with 12 points, followed by Nolan Gruss for 10.
The Cavaliers claimed the first quarter as a 19-14 victory by dismantling Minster’s zone much the same as Minster did theirs. The 6-foot-10 Jack Bruns made an easy target for Coldwater’s guards. He came up to the nail to combat Minster’s 2-3 zone, and quarterbacked the offense from there with a deceptively good jumper, and enhanced passing lanes thanks to his frame.
Minster abandoned the zone, and manned up in the second quarter.
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“They studied us pretty well I believe,” McClurg said. “They had some sets and hit us with a few things and we lost our aggressiveness. So we decided to go to man for a while.”
Stephey, Ketner, Fancher, and Cole McClurg quickly rediscovered their aggression. They unleashed mayhem on Coldwater’s guards on every trip down the floor.
Andrew Ketner jumps in front of Landon Knapke to knock a pass offline.
Stephey’s lightning-fast reflexes bought multiple fast break buckets, and McClurg’s overall athleticism kept Cavalier ball handlers uncomfortable and second-guessing pass lanes.
“Coach tells us to get really handsy,” Stephey said. “Especially me because I’m smaller [5-foot-8]. It’s really fun not to have to worry about what’s behind me because we have Shaq in the middle who can block it.”
Once, he poked a ball loose, and as it spliced toward the sideline, dove straight out horizontally, Superman style, and flung the ball behind him into McClurg’s waiting arms.
Minster erased the success Coldwater found playing inside out by not letting the ball inside in the first place, or even up to the arc. Some possessions ended before they really started.
“We’ve had a lot of issues handling ball pressure,” Hoskins said. “It’s cost us a lot of games this year.”
Nolan Gruss looks for daylight against 6-8 Cole Albers to put up a shot to no avail.
The total disruption of flow held Coldwater to three points in the second period, and as the steals piled up, transition possessions brought more threes.
“I thought we got most our threes in transition,” Michael McClurg said. “Just getting in the lane and kicking and finding the right shooters. When the ball can go inside out, it’s a lot easier that way.”
The ‘Cats led 31-23 at the half. Minster’s juggling club took the halftime stage. From unicycle juggling to flinging and catching giant yo-yos, they had more success than Coldwater, which spent its halftime trying to juggle all of Minster’s scoring options.
While the Cavs’ turnovers eased up, Minster kept pouring in threes. Ketner, Fancher and Dominic Meyer joined the three-point fun in the third to protect Minster’s lead, 45-36 after three quarters.
Coldwater’s Gruss surged late, scoring all 10 of his points in the second half. Twice, his Cavaliers cut the lead to six points in the fourth quarter, and attempted a three to make it aone-score separation, but they wouldn’t fall. Minster, which finished as a distant last place in the MAC from the free-throw line, made all six free-throw attempts, including four to lock the game down late for a 12-point win.
“This was a good game for us to get a bounce-back win and regroup before the tournament,” Albers said. “I felt matchup-wise that game is gonna prepare us in the long run of the tournament. But we just gotta take it one week at a time.”
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