Jay boys hoops win ACAC opener

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MONROE — The Jets stuck it to the Patriots for the first 90 seconds.

They drained 3-pointers on consecutive possessions while the visitors came up empty three times.

The next nine minutes, and most of the rest of the game, belonged to the Patriots.

After a quick 6-0 deficit on a pair of Kevin Brown 3-pointers, the Jay County High School basketball team went on a 19-2 run over the next 9:08 and held off a late fight Saturday to beat Adams Central 52-43 in its Allen County Athletic Conference opener.

“Basketball is a game of momentum and you have to stop them as quick as you can,” said JCHS coach Chris Krieg, who called a timeout 96 seconds into the game after the second Brown 3-pointer. “If it’s burning a timeout, it’s burning a timeout. You’ve got to get that stopped.

“I felt like that timeout (was) a great timeout for us. We stopped, relaxed, got refocused and offensive-wise we started moving the basketball and attacking and getting easy looks.”

The first was on a Michael Schlechty put-back basket on a Holton Hill missed 3-pointer. Cole Stigleman then found Ryan Schlechty cutting the lane for a layup, and Wyatt Geesaman scored on a Hill assist.

Jay County (5-5, 1-0 ACAC), which hosts Southern Wells in the conference tournament quarterfinal Tuesday, took 2:30 to tie the score at 6-6, and then scored six more points for a 12-0 spurt. Tyler LaFontaine of Adams Central stopped the run briefly with a put back as the Patriots led 12-8 after the first quarter.

But to start the second, Jay County tacked on seven more points, including a basket and a foul shot from Geesaman to open a 19-9 lead.

Johnny Carroll, the point guard for Adams Central (3-6, 1-2 ACAC), has the ball-handling skills and quickness to get around defenders, and more often than not as he got past his man there were two or three more Patriots waiting in the lane to help.

Because of Jay County controlling the paint — it had a 33-21 edge in rebounds — Adams Central had to settle for 3-point shots. Twenty-three of the Jets’ 43 field goals were from long range.

“Obviously they do a pretty good job packing it in,” said ACHS coach Aaron McClure. “They switch everything. It is going to be tough to get the ball in. It’s going to be tough to get a lot of drives.”

With Carroll’s knack for getting to the basket, Krieg said it was in his game plan to force the Jets to shoot from the outside.

Brown, who led Adams Central with 16 points, was 4-of-12 from behind the arc, and the Jets were 9-of-23 as a team. They shot just 7-of-20 from in front of it.

“Half of their shots were threes and that’s perfect,” Krieg said. “That’s what I want.”

Jay County’s lead was as big as 22-11 with less than four minutes remaining in the first half, but Adams Central got it down to four, 26-22, in the final minute. Stigleman muscled his way to an offensive rebound on a missed free throw and took the ball out to the perimeter with the clock winding down. Unable to run a set play, Stigleman swished contested 3-pointer from the left wing at the buzzer to make it 29-22 at half.

Stigleman’s 15 points were a team high, and Michael Schlechty joined him in double figures with 13 points. Schlechty also led all players with a 10-rebound effort for a double-double.

Jay County led by as many as 10 in the third quarter before Adams Central again started to chip away. The Jets trimmed the margin to five, 45-40, with less than two minutes to play after a Drew Schultz put-back.

From there the Jets were forced to foul and the Patriots were 7-of-8 from the free-throw line in the last 95 seconds.

“It was a pretty good battle there in the second half right until the end,” McClure said.



Junior varsity

Matt Franks scored 13 of his game-high 23 points in the fourth quarter in leading Jay County to a 49-38 victory.

The Patriots (7-3) had a led 12-11 after the first quarter before taking a 21-15 advantage into intermission. Adams Central got one point back during the third quarter with a 10-9 edge in scoring. In the final period, however, Franks scored just as many as the Jets to keep the Patriot lead intact.

Gabe Link scored nine points in support of Franks. Landon Grimes tallied six points while Noah Arbuckle contributed four points.

Xavier Ninde and Gavin Randall scored three points each and Gabe Faulkner added a free throw.



C team

Jay County held off a fourth-quarter rally for a 39-34 win over Adams Central.

The Patriots (3-5) led 19-13 at half and staked a 30-18 advantage heading into the fourth quarter. Adams Central scored nearly as many points (16) as it did during the first three periods, but wasn’t able to overcome the deficit.

Sheldon Upp paced Jay County with 11 points, and Brian Williams was second on the team with six points. Jay County got a five-point effort from Gavin Lambert, with Brinnin Wasson, Peyton Nichols and Logan Brown all adding four points.