Weitzel with the winner

With the clock winding down, Gavin Muhlenkamp drove to the left side of the lane, spun to his right toward the paint and put up a shot.
It didn’t go in.
Freshman Bennett Weitzel pulled down the rebound, and with the clock continuing to tick away, he shot too.
His didn’t miss.
Weitzel’s put-back was the deciding basket as a potential game-winner at the other end rimmed out to give the Jay County High School boys basketball team a 58-57 victory over the Southern Wells Raiders on Monday night.
“Obviously that was huge on Bennett going to the board extremely hard,” said JCHS coach Chris Krieg, whose team moved to 5-12 (2-3 Allen County Athletic Conference). “I’m proud of him. We needed it.”
The loss for the Raiders was the third in a row and the third defeat this season by three or fewer points.
“We’re getting pretty tired of taking positives away from losses,” Southern Wells coach Kyle Penrod said.
Jay County and Southern Wells (4-13, 0-5 ACAC) were tied at 54 for more than three minutes before Muhlenkamp hit a jumper to put the Patriots on top by two. Southern Wells seniors Kreigh Roush and Will Pennington both split a pair of free throws to tie the game, and then Pennington made the first of two bonus freebies to put the Raiders out front with 45 seconds to play.
Krieg called timeout with 39.7 ticks to go, and out of the break Quinn Faulkner’s 3-point attempt hit nothing but air. Muhlenkamp grabbed the rebound — one of 14 on the offensive end for Jay County — prompting another Krieg timeout with 17.7 seconds remaining.
After taking the inbound pass, Muhlenkamp dribbled around a defender and switched directions before putting up the shot that led to Bennett’s game winner.
One more Patriot timeout to draw up a defensive scheme with 4.4 seconds to play gave the Raiders an opportunity to plan accordingly as well. On the Raiders’ inbound, Roush crossed midcourt and heaved the potential game-winning 3-pointer with three Patriots in his face.
The ball plunked the right side of the rim, caromed to the left and fell to the floor.
In addition to being out-rebounded 40-27, the Raiders were 8-of-15 from the free-throw line, including a 3-for-8 effort in the final 4:21.
“Yeah, I mean, we had seniors at the line,” Penrod said. “It was seniors. It’s the guys we want taking them. (You’ve) just got to make free throws and got to come away with boards at the end.
“We had a lead, but if you don’t hit your free throws and don’t get rebounds at the other end, you can’t close people out.”
Jay County had three players — Noah Arbuckle, Muhlenkamp and Weitzel — with nine rebounds each.
“We talked about going to the boards, crashing the boards, because we had the size factor.”
Ethan Dirksen led the Patriots with 13 points, two ahead of Brayden Sprunger.
Arbuckle joined them in double figures with 10 points.
Roush was the game’s leading scorer with 23 points, 21 of which came in the final three quarters.
Jay County and Southern Wells traded blows throughout the game. The Raiders held an 18-17 advantage at the end of the first quarter before the Patriots went on a bit of a run in the second, eventually going ahead by 35-25 — the largest lead for either team on the night.
The Raiders notched the first nine points of the third quarter on 3-pointers from Austin Harris and Roush and three the hard way by Pennington to get a 36-35 lead.
The back-and-forth affair continued from there as neither team led by more than three points. In all, the game was tied 11 times and featured 13 lead changes.
“It gives them confidence,” Krieg said of being able to grind out the win. “It’s all about confidence. We went through a stretch where we played 10 straight road games and we played a lot of good basketball teams in that stretch.
“Playing at home, the kids love playing at home.”

Junior varsity
A 24-point second quarter carried Jay County to a 51-21 victory.
The Patriots (8-4) were ahead 12-3 at the end of one quarter before breaking it open before halftime. After leading 34-15 at intermission, they outscored the Raiders 17-6 in the final two periods.
Dusty Pearson and Crosby Heniser led JCHS with 10 and nine points, respectively. Gavin Myers and Adam Muhlenkamp contributed eight points each.

Freshman
Jay County had enough of a cushion through two quarters to hang on for a 34-31 win.
A six-point margin, 15-9, turned into just four for the Patriots (6-5) after the third quarter. The Raiders only cut into the deficit by one point at the end of the game.
Blake Bogenschutz led Jay County with 15 points, and Brady Davis contributed seven points.