The Cougars went on a 15-6 run to claim the halftime lead and pulled away in the final two quarters for a 69-60 victory over the Arrows in a Central Buckeye Conference Kenton Trail Division game on Friday night in Springfield.
“I told our guys, I think that was their best punch right then, if we could sustain it and to take the lead right before half was just enormous for us, because it just changes the momentum of the crowd,” said Cougars coach Brian Smith. “I don’t think the other teams have the depth we have. We went on a run there towards the middle of that second quarter, and we had four subs in. Most teams can’t rely on scoring from their subs, and we really can.”
Cougars senior Caleb Hall had 22 points for KR, while junior Brody Runkle had 12 points and senior Xavier White added 10 as Kenton Ridge improved to 2-0.
“These guys are a really exciting group,” Smith said. “We’re going to play super hard. And I think that’s our difference right now in that we’ve got some experience. We had some juniors in tonight, they made some mistakes, and like I told them, we won with you making those mistakes. We can live through that, and we’ll grow through that, just like these guys had to do last year when they were all sophomores. It was a tremendous effort.”
Tecumseh senior Chase Stafford had a game-high 25 points and senior Brycen Dixon added 16 points as the Arrows dropped their first game of the season.
The Arrows jumped out to an 18-7 lead, but the Cougars went on an 8-0 run to cut the lead to three points after one quarter.
Stafford hit back-to-back layups to give them a 27-20 lead, but the Cougars went on a 15-6 run — including seven points from Hall — to take a 35-33 lead into the locker room.
Kenton Ridge pulled away after two 3-pointers by White, another by Will Rastatter and an old-fashioned 3-point play by Brody Runkle to make it 46-37.
The Arrows cut the lead to five points in the fourth quarter, but couldn’t get any closer.
“We didn’t hit shots,” said Arrows coach Kyle Leathley. “We had a lot of clean looks, I thought, looks that I felt really good about. I would take them all day long, you know, but we didn’t stop anybody. That was it at the end of the day. We’ve got to get stops. It was stuff we’ve talked about. The first couple games, I think we’ve been better, but tonight, we kind of took a step back.
“Two big things that we’ve talked about and focused on is defending and rebounding. I don’t think we did great in either and against good teams, you’ve got to do that before it kind of catches you, and it kind of caught us, and then we were just scrambling.”
Hall scored nine of the team’s 19 fourth quarter points to seal the win.
“He’s really, really emotional, really good on the court,” Smith said. “I really started seeing some leadership. I saw Xavier directing some traffic, and Caleb talking during timeouts and I love that. There’s some timeouts for me to talk, but there’s also a lot of timeouts where we just let them talk. Xavier’s got three years of starting experience, so he knows exactly how we want to handle those late game situations.”
Round 2 between the Arrows and Cougars is set for Jan. 20 in New Carlisle.
“(Tecumseh’s) going to beat some people,” Smith said. “That’s a really good team. (Corey Russell) is a really good player, Stafford’s a really good player. And, my goodness, Dixon, if he’s open, it’s going in. We knew that going in, and it still happened. So there’s a lot of guys over there you can’t take away.”
After three straight road games this week, the Arrows will look to bounce back in their return home next Friday in a CBC Kenton Trail matchup against London. While they know there’s not much room for error, Leathly believes a team with one or two league losses could bring home the championship.
“I’d be surprised if you have an undefeated team in the league,” Leathley said. “I think it’s kind of wide open. You just gotta come ready to play every night and give it a go.”
The Cougars travel to Jonathan Alder next Friday night. The Pioneers lost at Urbana 58-40 in their league opener.
“We’ve got some big ones coming, but this league is one game at a time, and you’ve got to hold home court,” Smith said. “You have to (hold home court). You cannot go into the second half of the season down two or three games thinking you’re going to come back.”
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