The path to the basket wasn’t always wide open for Marion Local’s Brayden Mescher. He still scored 23 points to lead his team. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
The Flyers did it their way Friday in a physical defensive battle against Lincolnview to return to the Division VI state final. To win it this time, the Flyers will have to battle with even more will against Berlin Hiland.
Fairborn, OH – Marion Local never quits playing hard. Not even when they know they are about to celebrate a return to the Division VI state championship game.
Relax a little? Not a chance. Relentless effort permeates the Maria Stein DNA.
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So it was no surprise when Marion’s Brayden Mescher chased down a loose ball into the backcourt in front of his team’s bench. He dove past a Lincolnview player. He got the ball. But his feet were out of bounds. He was disappointed.
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His team led by 15 points. Only 38 seconds remained on the clock.
Doesn’t matter. Diving on the floor is always the right play.
Especially when the opponent from Van Wert brought its tough-as-nails DNA to the fight against the bigger, longer and stronger Flyers. It’s the job until the end.
“Watching film I expected them to play hard, but they hit a little harder than I thought they were going to,” Mescher said. “They got into us all game. They were definitely more physical than I thought, but we knew they were gonna play as hard as they could.”
Marion had no difficulty matching the grit of Lincolnview, obvious believers that the size of the fight in the dog matters more than the size of any dog. But, as hard as the Lancers pushed and played, eventually the big dog won the battle of attrition.
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Marion Local’s advantages became more and more evident as the game got into the fourth quarter. The Flyers played suffocating defense, blocked eight shots, rode Mescher’s ability to get to the rim for all of his 23 points, and bunched together a lot of other team-effort factors to pull away for a 46-30 victory at the Nutter Center.
“We knew the uphill battle we had to face when it came to size and physicality,” Lincolnview coach Brett Hammons said. “We preached that all week long, and our kids battled for the most part.”
And sometimes, after the Flyers were able spread the floor, Brayden Mescher’s path to the basket was easy.
The Flyers (26-1) start Mescher at 6-foot-2 at the point, Luke Everman at 6-3 on a wing and 6-5 Brennan Hess and 6-3 Kale Ahrens inside. In Division VI, that’s a big lineup with long arms and thick bodies. They are built to take a beating.
The Flyers better rest their legs, ice their bruises, hydrate and sleep well. Saturday at 7:30 p.m. they take on Berlin Hiland, a team that knows how to play just as physical. The Hawks had to flex to hold off a Kirtland second-half rally to win their semifinal 65-43.
“Best feeling in the world to do it with your boys,” Mescher said. “Last year, obviously, was disappointing. We didn’t play near to the standard we should have. This year we get another chance.”
The Hawks (25-3) routinely make it to state, including six times since 2018, under 21-year head coach Mark Schlabach.
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“They’re probably the most elite small-school basketball program in the state, and we obviously have a really good athletic tradition as well,” Marion coach Kurt Goettemoeller said. “It’s a very cool Division VI state championship game against a tremendous coach that’s been doing it for a long time.”
To get to the final, there was no question the Flyers were navigating a game that meant Northwest District bragging rights to both teams. The banging and bumping rivaled the contact on the backstretch, frontstretch and in the turns at Eldora Speedway.
Kale Ahrens draws a foul on his way to the basket. The Flyers drew 18 fouls and shot 17 free throws compared to four for Lincolnview.
Marion led most of the first half, but at halftime their margin was only 22-19. Goettemoeller credited his assistants with offensive adjustments. They said they were shooting too quickly, settling for too many 3-pointers and, as a result, turned the ball over nine times.
The thing that worked was Mescher scoring eight points, probing the Lancers’ defense for an opportunity to score. And when he saw an opening he shot the gap, got to the rim uncontested, got there with a hard-hitting bump for an and-one or just got fouled hard for two shots.
The second-half offensive shift to more side-to-side swinging of the ball and more patience opened the floor up a little for the Flyers. The Lancers, as quick as they showed at times, had no answer for Mescher’s bullish, straight-line drives.
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Grant Kremer played a major role, too. Twice in the first quarter he made 3-pointers on baseline out of bounds plays. He did it again early in the third.
“It feels good that coach has a lot of confidence,” Kremer said. “He told me earlier this year, ‘I think every shot you take is great.’ Knowing that gives you a lot of confidence.”
Grant Kremer canned three 3-pointers on baseline out-of-bounds plays to loosen the Lincolnview defense.
Kremer’s accuracy meant the Lancers had to stick close to him. And a minute after his three in the third, Mescher scored twice on drives for a four-point possession sandwiched around a backcourt turnover.
Suddenly the score was 29-22. That felt like a lot to Lincolnview in a game in which it struggled to score. So the Flyers spread them out, the Lancers were afraid to leave the three-point line open and Mescher got more space to get to the rim.
The lead was six at the end of the third. The Flyers opened the fourth with a 13-2 run. And when the game ended, Mescher had half his team’s points.
“He’s 6-3, athletic and built like a brick,” Hammons said. “It’s tough to stay in front of a guy like that. I mean, he’s something special. He’s priority number one.”
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Marion Local coach Kurt Goettemoeller expressed great respect for the Berlin Hiliand team the Flyers face in the final.
Marion’s second-half defense held the Lancers to 11 points and their lowest point total of the season. Only twice before were they held under 51 points.
“The story of the game was defense,” Goettemoeller said. “We locked in defensively, and we finally got a five-to-seven point lead where we could spread them out.”
That led to easy buckets, 27 points in the paint and those wide-open threes for Kremer’s nine points on the out-of-bounds plays.
“We talked about the easy-basket war and winning the easy-basket war, and one of those things is baseline out of bounds plays,” Goettemoeller said. “You can’t give them up, and you got to get a few, and we did a great job. They were a zone out-of-bounds team, so we were able to scheme a few things up.”
Back to the defense. Goettemoeller said Lincolnview is the best cutting team he’s seen all season. His team likes to get a hand in the passing lane, which creates back-door cut opportunities. He was glad to have a week to prepare for that, but they needed the first half to learn how to totally stop it.
Marion’s 6-5 Brennan Hess blocked four shots and the Flyers blocked eight as a team.
“Usually it takes us maybe a quarter, maybe a half, to get dialed in on the other team’s tendencies,” Goettemoeller said.
Ahrens always guards the other team’s best player, and Goettemoeller routinely praises him as his team’s best defender. A primary goal to dial in was to keep playmaking point guard Gavin Evans out of the lane and pushed as far away from the basket as possible. Marion’s reach on the perimeter, led by Ahrens, made it hard for the Lancers to run their offense.
“I challenged Kale at halftime,” Goettemoeller said. “I said, ‘You played good defense in the first half, but we need great and in the second half.’ We just really locked in defensively.”
Ahrens said the challenge motivated him.
“I just tried to work harder, then get my teammates into it, get them up to my speed that I have to play to,” he said. “And obviously I can’t hold a guy just myself. I have to have them to help me. It’s how a team works.”
Brayden Mescher is eager to have a second chance Saturday at a state title.
Goettemoeller believes the teamwork must be at an all-time best against Hiland. They can’t commit nine first-half turnovers and 13 overall. They must match the physicality and adjust to whatever bumping and pushing the officials allow.
“We got a bunch of fighters in that room,” he said. “We know how physical Berlin is going to play, and they know how physical we’re going to play. It’s going to look like a football game out there tomorrow. We’ll see how the refs call it, but it’s gonna be a fist fight, and we expect that for four quarters. And that’s just like we like it.”
Obviously.
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