“If I had to pick one, it might have been the Kaden Post dunk,” Wayne head coach Nathan Martindale joked.
The 49-40 Warriors win in a showdown of two of the three teams tied at the top of the Greater Western Ohio Conference standings midway through the season was a slower paced and more deliberate affair.
That might have been needed to help level out emotions following Wayne’s buzzer-beating win on Tuesday that made it on ESPN.
“It’s all about patience and we talk about pace all the time,” Martindale said. “You got to know when to attack and when to pull the ball back out. I think we’ve been working on that a lot and I feel like our guys did a pretty good job of that, especially in the third quarter.”
Northmont entered the game on a seven game winning streak after dropping its first three games of the season. The Thunderbolts were ready to prove they belonged in the three-way tie with Centerville coming into Friday’s games and showed up early.
Credit: Steven Wright
Credit: Steven Wright
Despite Northmont grinding out a 9-7 lead after the first quarter, its own gameplan began working against them when Wayne employed a similar strategy. Both teams going into zone defenses took the air out of the room as both sides ran clock and rarely attacked which put a limit on the amount of possessions in a lower scoring half.
Jumpers wouldn’t fall for Northmont while Wayne took care of the ball and steadily began to exploit defensive breakdowns, making several layups to take the lead and begin pulling away.
“We started the game off with a level of intensity that is required in a game of this magnitude against Wayne, who is used to being in big games like this,” Northmont head coach Allen Spears said. “As I told our team, it’s been awhile since we’ve been competing for first place at this point in the year.
“It looked like two heavyweights going at it in the first quarter. And then in the second quarter, things got away from us.”
Wayne (9-1, 6-1) grew its lead to as much as 17 in the fourth quarter, largely thanks to solid free throw shooting by its guards during the second half. Sophomore Dontay Chivers ended up with 13 points, going 7-for-10 from the charity stripe, and senior Isaiah Thompson added 10 and was 5 of 6 at the line.
In the final minutes, Northmont (7-4, 5-2) was able to cut its deficit in half thanks to a full court press that produced a 9-0 run in just over a minute. The Thunderbolts weren’t able to pull closer than eight, however, and a back-and-forth exchange during the final minute in which both teams missed layups before Post threw down a two-handed dunk in transition for Wayne was the only time either side intentionally pushed the pace and it helped finish off the win for the Warriors.
“When you play a team that matches your athleticism and your quickness, you got to find some other ways to score,” Spears said. “Making more jump shots and then that free throw line has been killing us all year. We’ve been fortunate in a lot of games to overcome a lack of good free throw shooting and still win and it caught up with us tonight.”
Northmont got 12 points by sophomore Kaleb Kelly and 11 by senior Chisom Ibe.
Wayne’s eighth straight victory kept them on pace with Centerville. Northmont drops one game back and into a tie with Fairmont as a clear separation has been established between the top and bottom of the GWOC standings.
ESPN maybe won’t be showing another Wayne highlight on its next broadcast after no heroics were needed Friday, but the Warriors are creating wins anyway they can get them.
“We got to enjoy that for a little bit and then had to get back to work and try and play a tough Northmont team,” Martindale said.
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