Jay falls short against Spartans

FORT WAYNE — Jay County fought toe to toe with fourth-ranked Homestead for a majority of the first half on Monday.
The overmatched Patriots actually led 21-17 midway through the second quarter.
But a pair of missed buckets and a turnover caused the lead to vanish, and the Spartans went on a 14-1 run on their way to a 51-35 victory in the Class 4A Sectional 6 championship at Wayne.
It was the second consecutive sectional title for Homestead, which will meet Carroll at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Marion regional.
“(That) really hurt us there,” JCHS coach Craig Teagle said of the final minutes of the second quarter. “I think we had a couple turnovers they scored off of, then we had looks at the basket that were good looks, they just rimmed in, rimmed out and just didn’t go down.
“We really needed those for our momentum going into halftime and the momentum shifted right there.”
Homestead (25-2) led Jay County (18-7) by four at half, and went on a 6-1 run to open the third quarter thanks to back-to-back buckets by the heavily-recruited Caleb Swanigan and a spin move in the paint by Jordan Geist.
Swanigan, who has offers from schools such as Kentucky, Michigan State, Arizona, Duke and Indiana, finished with a game-high 21 points, nine rebound and two blocks, and Geist chipped in with 19 points.
Patriot sophomore Jay Houck answered with a baseline drive for two points at the other end of the court, and then a long jumper by Geist and a 3-pointer by Teddy Ray gave Homestead a 36-24 lead, it’s biggest of the game to that point.
Then following another basket by Houck — he had 10 points, four rebounds, one assist and a block — Geist held the ball near the scorer’s table for nearly 2 minutes, 30 seconds to slow down the tempo.
“We know teams are going to want to back in and back down on Caleb and make it difficult for him,” said Homestead coach Chris Johnson, whose team has won five straight since its Feb. 20 loss to Snider. “With us being up 10, there is no sense to force the action, so why not make them come out and guard us?
“That’s what we tried to do, especially there in the third quarter.”
“The lower the score, the better the chance we have to win,” Teagle said. The Patriots are now 2-7 in games in which their opponents score 40 or more points. “We knew we would probably get a stop at the end.”
Homestead held the ball for the final shot and missed.
“(The slower tempo) was fine with me,” Teagle added. “The lower the possessions, the better the chance we’ve got. You’ve just got to hang in and be tough.”
The Spartans continued to slow down the tempo in the fourth quarter, once again holding the ball just inside midcourt to force the Jay County defense to come out and guard them.
Teagle and the Patriots held strong, however, letting Homestead run down the clock to shorten the game. Teagle said he told his kids at the break they were going to let Homestead go another minute and then start pressuring the Spartan offense.
A minute passed, Jay County forced Homestead into a missed shot and at the other end of the court Zach Pryor hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key to cut the gap to 36-29.
But the remainder of the game belonged to Geist, Swanigan and the defending sectional champions. Geist scored seven points and Swanigan added a half dozen in the final six minutes as the Spartans pulled away.
“I thought we played really well,” Teagle said. “I thought sometimes we out-teamed them. The biggest difference was just physicality. They were just stronger than us around the rim and were able to move us and get us to positions where we couldn’t score the ball.
“I think that should be a big motivating factor for our kids coming back — get in that weight room and bust it.”
Jay County scored the first bucket of the game on an offensive-rebound put back by Adam Dirksen on its second possession of the game. Dirksen finished with team-highs in points (13) and rebounds (nine), while also adding three assists.
Homestead scored the next eight points before Kyler Carvel scored on a give-and-go with Dirksen to make it 8-4 Homestead.
Following a bucket by Geist, the Patriots went on an 8-0 run — two points by Houck and a personal six-point run by Dirksen — to take their first lead of the game, 11-10, with 1:41 remaining in the first.
The lead changed three more times in the final moments of the opening quarter as the Spartans led 14-13 after eight minutes. Jay County had an opportunity to take the lead, but a last-second shot by Houck was off the mark.
“We did a great job.” Teagle said. “The only thing I didn’t like was our execution at the end of the quarter. They couldn’t hear us very well (and) we didn’t get communicated very well. We had a chance to go up by one and we needed to do that.
“I thought we played well great for the first 14 minutes. It was those two minutes right before the half that really hurt us.”