Cedarville led from start to finish, beating the Eagles 78-49 to clinch at least a share of their third straight Ohio Heritage Conference South Division title.
The Indians improved to 14-2 and 11-1 in the league. They’re four games ahead of Catholic Central (7-7, 7-5) and can clinch the outright title with a crossover division victory at West Jefferson on Tuesday.
“That’s awesome for our program,” said Cedarville coach Ryan Godlove. “I will tell you, though, our focus — last year, we went out of the tournament early — so our focus is learning from last year. We want to keep things rolling. We’re hoping to make a run this year, so we just focus on one game at a time. We lost a tough one to Northeastern (on Jan. 20) and so I think that kind of helped put things back into perspective. We’ve still got to keep getting better every game, every practice. As much as you hate to lose, I think it’s just keeping guys focused on one game at a time, and focused on just getting better.”
Cedarville, which led 41-25 at the half, had four players in double figures — junior Cooper Hardy scored 18 points, sophomore Brayden Trimbach had 17, senior Nate Van Loo had 14 and senior Will Mossing had 12.
The Indians returned all but one of its varsity players from last year, but several are playing in different positions and roles, Godlove said.
They also added Trimbach, who returned to Cedarville after playing his freshman season at Yellow Springs — where his dad, Nick Trimbach, was the head coach. He averaged 23 points per game and was named Metro Buckeye Conference Player of the Year.
While the Indians were winning early on, they weren’t necessarily playing together, Godlove said. That’s changed over the last few weeks.
“I feel like in the second half, it’s just been neat to watch things starting to click,” he said. “I feel like we’re playing well together, guys looking for each other, guys starting to learn where each other is going to be, their strengths and accepting roles.”
A year ago, the Indians fell to Newton in a first-round tournament game. The loss fueled their desire to make a run this winter.
“Last year we were very inexperienced,” Godlove said. “After having that experience of losing that first round last year, I think guys are hungry to get back there and have a chance to redeem themselves. Until last year, we had made some nice runs in the tournament, and so I think that really hurt guys, and they want to get back to where we were before.”
Cedarville’s Little Dribblers — a skill-based ballhandling program for Kindergarten through third graders — showed off their skills with a halftime performance.
“When it comes to basketball, it’s such a skill-related sport,” Godlove said. “Those little things that our parents and our community are buying into from the little dribblers to the youth, I think all those things matter because we don’t have kids not picking up a basketball until junior high. It’s hard to build a solid program. And so all those little things from the little dribblers to our junior high program to what we’re doing here — even our assistant coaches have been around for a while. I think that stability matters.”
Cedarville has won four conference titles this decade and advanced to a Division IV regional final game in 2021, falling to eventual state champion Botkins. They’ve won 111 games since the 2019-20 season.
“I couldn’t be more proud of just where we’re at right now as a program and guys just buying in to what we’re trying to do says a lot about our community,” Godlove said. “It’s about a culture and I really feel like the community has bought into that.”
Forty-eight minutes after Trimbach’s 3-pointer, Cedarville left the gym looking like a team that plans to be playing a lot longer this March.
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