A Christmas Merricle

WAPAKONETA, Ohio — Reed Merricle hardly missed a 3-point shot.

Adan Scott out-rebounded the Indians by himself.

It was a rough outing for the Fort Recovery High School boys basketball team on Friday night in a place it has historically bad memories as it dropped a 69-43 game to the host Wapakoneta Redskins.

“We just have a hard time keeping people in front of us,” said FRHS coach Michael Bashore, whose team lost in the district tournament at Wapakoneta in both 2016 and 2017. “Hats off to them, they are a good team. We knew they were going to be a good team. They can shoot the ball well.”

Merricle led a 3-point barrage by the Redskins as they were 13-of-23 from long distance. Merricle made eight of those, including seven in a row over the second and third quarters.

“It wasn’t like we were ignoring him all together,” Bashore said. “When you’re not a strong defensive team and you try to focus on two kids, a third kid … it wasn’t like we didn’t know he could shoot.”

Wapakoneta (5-1), which lost for the first time Thursday, led 11-0 after the first quarter, but that’s when Merricle began to catch fire. He drained consecutive triples from the right wing on assists from Aaron Good, then flipped court to bury one from the left corner on a Noah Ambus dish.

His personal nine-point run pushed the advantage to double digits, and he later made two more shots from long range as the Redskins began to pull away in the second quarter.

In addition to leaving Merricle open so often, Fort Recovery (3-3) was 10-of-27 from the field in the first half while Wapakoneta shot better at nearly 60 percent (13-of-22).

“Early on I thought we did a nice job with them,” Bashore said. “Against a really good team like this you can’t miss eight contested layups. We missed eight of them in the first half. That’s a tie ball game or a three-point ball game and maybe we have a little more fight in us.”

Merricle sank two more 3-pointers amidst a 10-point run for the Redskins in the third quarter. He hit one more in the fourth quarter to go 8-for-12 from beyond the arc as he finished with a game-high 24 points.

Scott chipped in 19 points for the Redskins after going into halftime with just six points. He also hauled in a game-high 18 rebounds, two more than the Indians had as a team. The Indians, meanwhile, managed only six defensive rebounds to the Redskins’ nine offensive boards as FRHS was at the wrong end of a 34-16 differential on the glass.

“That’s usually not something that happens to us,” said Bashore, whose team hosts the Ansonia Tigers tonight. “We’re usually pretty good on the glass. It just wasn’t our night.

“I think once we got down, a lot of that stuff just snowballed from there. We have got to go back to work (today) and try to get better.

Payton Jutte led the Indians with 17 points, including a pair of 3-pointers. Clay Schmitz joined him in double figures with a baker’s dozen before leaving the game in the fourth quarter limping on his ankle. No other Tribe player scored more than six points.

“They ran their stuff well,” Bashore said. “They came hard off of their screens. That win is on them more than it is on us.

“We didn’t play very well but Wapakoneta did all the right things tonight. The victory was well-earned by them.”



Junior varsity

Fort Recovery needed three overtime periods walk away with a 66-60 victory.

After the two teams were tied at the end of regulation, Ryne Post drained a 3-pointer at the buzzer of the first overtime period as the score was even at 52-apiece.

Both teams scored five points in the second extra stanza before the Indians pulled away for the win.

Ian Homan led the Indians (5-1) with 19 points, and Brian Bihn powered his way in the paint to 18 points. Post ended with 17 points and Reagan Martin added five points.