Difficult shooting for the Tigers against the Clark Montessori defense, Drake Ahrens managed to put up 21 points, but it wasn’t enough for a win. (Press Pros Feature Photos By Julie McMaken Wright)
Versailles battled to the end, shaving down double-digit deficits three times. But the final push was too late, and Clark Montessori claimed the regional title 62-57.
Trotwood, Oh – Fourth quarter, 0:21 left, Versailles trails 60-57. The second of two Clark Montessori free throws clangs off the rim, and Versailles gets its last final wave of hope. Hope, the Tigers didn’t have much when they trailed by 10 with 2:15 left. Their hope was fading fast early when they trailed 16-6.
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With their final hope, the Tigers found their lone senior, Jace Watren, who let it fly from 25 feet. No good. A jump ball on the rebound went to Clark Montessori, and two converted free throws sealed it. 62-57 Clark Montessori over Versailles in the district championship.
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Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so bad if they just gave up hope. But that’s not how they do things in Versailles. Anyone who came to Trotwood-Madison on Friday night looking for quit, premature despair, or surrender left empty-handed.
“It just says a lot about how these guys are raised,” Head Coach Travis Swank said. “Our community doesn’t believe in quitting, and it doesn’t accept it. We’re gonna fight ‘til the very end. We just didn’t have enough ammo at the end.”
Versailles clawed back from an early double-digit deficit, taking its first lead late in the second quarter before quickly relinquishing it. The fourth quarter margin was as much as 12, and eight with just 90 seconds left.
Freshman Maddox Stonebraker put up 18 points for the Tigers…16 of them in the 2nd half.
Three times Clark Montessori strung together a run that threatened to break the game wide open. And three times Versailles stood its ground and reeled Clark back in. In a culture where the phrase “good effort” is thrown around cheaply, the Tigers earned it for 32 minutes. As goes the variously attributed quote, they didn’t lose the game, they just ran out of time.
And yet, on the bracket, the Cougars are district champions, and move on to play Preble Shawnee in the regional semifinals.
“You can’t beat good teams and expect it to be easy,” Clark Montessori Coach Cashmere Wright said about Versailles’ late surge. “In order to win a championship that’s worth something, it’s gonna take something. That’s what I love about a game like this.”
Perhaps Versailles overcharged its Karma credit card a year ago on a Cinderella run to the Regional finals as a #11 seed, and paid the price this year as a #1 seed. Or maybe it just ran into the wrong team at the wrong time.
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Clark Montessori’s height advantage daunted Versailles early. The Cougars swatted three shots in the first three minutes and put the Tigers on their heels offensively. A harassing defense prevented Versailles’ from establishing any flow or rhythm. As a team that would much rather dribble-drive and score in the paint, they had to rethink the offensive strategy against an athletic group of shot blockers, including Anthony Austin-Robinson, who averages 2.3 blocks per game, and got two early.
Versailles’ Kade Schwartz pressures a Clark Montessori ball-handler.
Drake Ahrens scored four of his game-leading 21 points in the first quarter, keeping the Tigers afloat as they limped to a 12-6 deficit after one, with little confidence but no shortage of hope.
Ahrens pushed the offense in the second quarter, looking to score before the half-court defense could torment them. Ahrens assisted Watren three times in four minutes of the second quarter, once from midcourt, and another out of traffic denser the flower aisle on Valentine’s Day for a 3-pointer.
Watren scored nine of his 12 points in the second quarter, and more than earned the right to be the one to take the last shot of the game.
Freshman Maddox Stonebreaker checked in for the first time with four seconds left in the half He beat the buzzer on a put-back layup to give Versailles a 27-25 halftime lead, which was unthinkable after the first quarter.
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Stonebreaker’s pattern continued. He grabbed five offensive rebounds that turned into nine points – all scored by himself.
“It’s what we needed,” Swank said. “Austin-Robinson was sitting in the middle all night. He’s long and lanky and we wanted to pull him out. So we put in a big that could shoot it, and [Stonebreaker] hit some big shots for us.”
Jace Watren drives for a lay-up over a Cougar defender.
Four times he scored on the first offensive possession after he checked in. The second such instance came after Clark Montessori started the third quarter on a 10-0 run, again threatening to pull away. But Stonebreaker buzzed in and nailed back-to-back 3’s to breathe life back into his team.
Stonebreaker finished with 18 points, including the score that cut Clark’s lead to one possession at the end of the game.
Versailles’ mixture of zone and man defense didn’t contain Clark’s athletic playmakers, and they traded buckets through the back half of the third quarter. Sophomore O’mari Brown paced the Cougars with 18 points, including six in the third quarter.
Speedy guard Donavan Hayden-Thomason made his presence known by hitting two 3-pointers in the fourth quarter. Clark pulled away for the third time, inflating their lead to a game-high 12 points in the fourth quarter.
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But Wilker for two, Stonebreaker, Ahrens, Stonebreaker again, and some poor free throw shooting by Clark in between, and the lead was whittled down to 59-57. One of two free throws gave Versailles a last gasp for the game, and as it turned out, for the season.
Tiger Ethan Wilker has a pair Cougars on his back.
The 3-ball caught iron but missed, and Austin-Robinson forced a jump ball on the rebound, capping his impactful 10-point second half. Brown redeemed a previous 0/2 free throw line trip, hitting the pair with four seconds left to win the district title.
“We learned what it takes today,” Ahrens said. “We had some young guys who stepped up today, and they’re gonna step up next year too. We’ll be back, and we’ll get farther.”
In the wake of such a loss, thoughts about next year might be more of an irritant than ointment. But the squirrel that plans for two winters never goes hungry. As soon as Swank gets back at it, Ahrens’ 21 gritty points, and Stonebreaker, the defibrillator, scoring 18 as a freshman will be hard to get out of his mind. Both will return for the 2025-2026 season.
“We’ve gotta get more shot-making ability and learn to handle the ball a little better,” Swank said. “We gotta be a little quicker and slide our feet, it’s just skill things. A lotta people wanna run plays and everything else, but our fundamentals gotta get better.”
A few things they won’t have to work on? Believing, hoping, competing.
“We’re taught from when we’re young to never give up.” Ahrens said. “That’s where our fight comes from. Our community all teaches the same thing. You never quit. You never give up on your people or your teammates.”
That’s just how they do things in Versailles.
Jace Watren of Versailles snags a defensive rebound.
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