Patriots take first place

BLUFFTON — The Patriots are alone at the top.
Jay County High School’s boys basketball team defeated the Bluffton Tigers on Friday, 49-37, to take sole possession of first place in the Allen County Athletic Conference regular season standings.
“Huge win, because you can’t win the conference without winning tonight,” said JCHS coach Chris Krieg, whose team won the conference tournament championship Jan. 16 and is one win away from securing a sweep of the ACAC titles. “We can’t win the conference without a win (Feb. 12) against Heritage.
“We don’t want to share it. As a team we are selfish and we don’t want to share.”
Senior Adam Dirksen was pleased his squad — the Patriots improve to 11-4 (5-0 ACAC) — was able to beat the Tigers for the second time this season.
“It feels good,” he said, noting that when the Jay County and Bluffton (11-4, 4-1 ACAC) met Jan. 15 in Portland the Patriots didn’t start out well. “I feel like we started off better in the first half, but then they started hitting threes.
“They started getting close and we were able to pull off a win.”
Jay County had a 17-point lead, 41-24, less than three minutes into the fourth quarter until Bluffton mounted its comeback.
Grant Prible — he led all players with 21 points to go with his team-high six rebounds — caught fire, going on a personal 10-2 run to get the Tigers’ deficit to single digits, 41-34.
He scored six consecutive points on two offensive rebounds put-backs, and added a jumper from the right baseline. The 6-0 run made it 41-30, with 3:41 to play.
Jay Houck, who led the Patriots with 12 points, drove the baseline for his final field goal of the game, and Prible followed with back-to-back fast-break buckets after Patriot turnovers.
“It was a mirror image of the first game,” said Bluffton coach Kevin Leising, who said he will be retiring after this season, his 24th year. “In the first game I felt like we played well in the first half and in the second it was lights out.
“In this game, the game was over to most people’s estimation, and we actually … got it fairly close. The best part from our perspective is that our kids didn’t quit in a situation where they obviously could have quit.”
Prible’s final bucket came with less than two minutes to play.
Kyler Carvel (2-for-2), Houck (1-for-2) and Dirksen (1-for-2) did their part at the free-throw line to put the game out of reach.
Dirksen (10 points and nine rebounds) and Houck (six rebounds) did their part on both ends of the court, but Houck spent most of the second quarter on the bench with two fouls. The Patriots’ post players combined to score 31 points in the first game against Bluffton while managing just 22 this time around.
With Houck on the bench in the first half, Justin Crouch, Jason Schlosser and Carvel helped pick up the slack. Carvel had seven of his 11 points at half, with Crouch and Schlosser adding four and three points respectively in the first 16 minutes.
“That is what we talked about,” Krieg said. “They were going to key on Jay and Adam … you’re going to get angles on everybody else and you have to attack those angles because help is not going to be there
“In the first half, Kyler did an excellent job of doing that.”
Carvel also had two assists and two steals, one of which led to a thunderous breakaway dunk by Dirksen in the fourth quarter.
“We have no one that can guard (Houck and Dirksen),” Leising said, noting he hoped his team could have done some damage offensively when Houck was sitting on the bench. “When we give layups to the other guys and they don’t even do much to get the layup … that just drove me nuts.”
Jay County closed the opening period on an 8-0 run to lead 15-5 after the first quarter. A bucket by Crouch and a 3-pointer to start the second gave the Patriots a 15-point lead. They had the same advantage at half (29-14) and to start the fourth quarter (36-31).

Junior varsity
Jay County gave up a basket to start the game then went on a 14-0 run for a dominating first quarter.
After giving up three consecutive 3-pointers to Bluffton to start the second period, the Patriot defense tightened up in a 34-21 victory.
Jay County (8-3, 5-0 ACAC) didn’t allow a point for a remainder of the half, and outscored the Tigers in each of the final two periods, 7-2 and 11-8.
Ryan Schlechty had a game-high 18 points, with twin brother Michael and Andrew Trewyn both following with four points. Holton Hill, Max Moser, Garrett Rodgers and Jordan Stultz had two points each.
Jackson Ingle led the Tigers with 10 points.

Freshman
Jay County moved to 10-3 (5-0 ACAC) with a 31-26 victory to start the sweep of the Tigers.
The Patriots held a 10-6 advantage after the opening quarter and pushed it to 18-13 heading into the break. The visitors went point-for-point in the final two periods to reach double-digit win total.
Parker Grimes had a game-high 12 points for Jay County. Wyatt Geesaman followed with eight points, and Gabe Faulkner added four.
Xavier Ninde, Gavin Randall and Matt Franks had two points apiece.