Effort not enough

Copyright 2019, The Commercial Review

All Rights Reserved

FORT WAYNE — What the Patriots gave up in size and quickness they made up for in effort.

As momentum swung in favor of the Generals on multiple occasions, the Patriots never counted themselves out.

Effort simply wasn't enough on Wednesday.

Jay County High School's boys basketball team, vastly undersized and not nearly as quick, hung with the host Wayne Generals but had its season end with a 50-42 loss in the Class 4A Sectional 6 quarterfinal on Wednesday.

“If you have to lose a game this is the kind of game you want to lose, going out fighting and you feel good inside that you gave your best,” said JCHS coach Chris Krieg, whose team ended the year 14-9 after losing its final four games. “I'll be honest, we gave it our best tonight.”

Wayne (14-9) advances to the sectional semifinal at 7:30 p.m. against Muncie Central, which knocked off Columbia City 58-42 earlier Wednesday night.

Jay County's two forwards, Michael Schlechty and Wyatt Geesaman, were battling separate issues. Schlechty found himself in early foul trouble while Geesaman was fighting a bug. The Patriots couldn't afford to keep either of them off the court for extended periods of time if they wished to compete against 6-foot, 6-inch forward Darius Alexander or the 6-foot, 4-inch Craig Young in the paint.

Young, who had 18 points, is headed to Ohio State on a football scholarship, while Alexander will play defensive line for Toledo. Alexander finished with seven points, and they combined to haul in 11 rebounds. In spite of Jay County switching to a zone to combat the Generals' size and quickness, Young and Alexander were still able to bully their way to the rack.

Young finished with three powerful dunks, one on an alley-oop from Cam Starks to open the third quarter, and another one-handed flush after grabbing a defensive rebound at the other end.

“Their bigs are mammoth people around the net,” Krieg said. “They are both so strong, explosive off the ground.”

Neither Jay County nor Wayne was able to get a grip of momentum during the first half. The Patriots opened the game a Michael Schlechty 3-pointer before a Ryan Schlechty layup. But Wayne responded with seven straight points.

Early in the second quarter the Generals were out front 18-13, but the Patriots scored nine consecutive points to grab a four-point advantage.

Wayne closed the half with five straight poitns, and it carried over to a 7-3 run to begin the third, including Young's alley-oop, layup by Alexander and a 3-pointer from Starks, the game's leading scorer with 19 points.

Jay County got back to within one, 30-29, midway through the third quarter but that's when Wayne started to get momentum back and not let go. The Generals grabbed a 47-34 lead with less than three minutes to play in the game forcing Krieg to use his final timeout.

“I said 'Guys I can't stop the clock anymore but we have to cut this in half in the next minute,'” Krieg said. “By god we did.”

The Schlechtys teamed for six straight points over the next 78 seconds to make it 47-40, but the Generals put the game away by going 5-of-6 from the free-throw line in the final minute.

“All year long I felt like our kids could be more mentally tough,” Krieg said. “Tonight they showed they were mentally tough … They fought for another day, unfortunately there's just not another day for them.”

In the final game of his career, Ryan Schlechty matched his uniform number by leading the Patriots with 15 points. Michael Schlecthy chipped in a dozen. He finished with 551 career points, good for 27th on the Patriots' all-time scoring list.

Wednesday also marked the final game for five other seniors, Parker Grimes, Matt Franks, Xavier Ninde, Gavin Randall and Geesaman.

“Our seven seniors are going to be truly missed,” Krieg said.