Thien, Fort bury Gophers

Copyright 2018, The Commercial Review

All Rights Reserved

WAPAKONETA, Ohio — Grace Thien stood in the corner of the court in front of her squad’s bench.

As her teammates brought the ball up the court, Indian coach Brian Patch turned toward her.

“This is the moment we bury them right here,” he said.

So the Tribe senior took a pass from classmate Carley Stone and launched a shot.

Swish.

The next time down the court, Thien made her way back to the corner and Stone found her again.

Swish.

Stone to Thien in the corner a third time.

Swish.

Gophers buried.

Thien’s sharpshooting and solid defensive play all around helped carry the eighth-ranked Fort Recovery High School girls basketball team to a 58-24 shellacking of the Ridgemont Golden Gophers in the Division IV District semifinal Thursday at Wapakoneta.

“That’s somewhat shocking to me is how she gets so wide open sometimes,” said Patch, whose team advances to the district championship on Saturday against Midwest Athletic Conference rival Minster Wildcats. Fourth-ranked Minster defeated New Bremen 51-33 in the second semifinal Thursday.

“I’m not sure how you leave her open like that on three consecutive times,” he added. “I talked to her, said ‘This is where we got to end this,’ and basically she did.”

For all intents and purposes, Thien’s baskets essentially added salt to the wounds. Fort Recovery (20-5) was already ahead 33-13.

“It was really fun,” Thien said of her scoring spurt. “I just like getting an open three by my favorite play, my assist from Carley Stone. That was cool so that was fun.”

Thien, who extended her school record of made 3-pointers in a season to 76, led all players with 19 points. Sophomore Val Muhlenkamp chipped in 11 as the only other player for either team to score in double figures.

The Indians’ ease on the offensive end was a result of their defense. Fort Recovery held Ridgemont (16-9) to just three points in the first quarter and 11 at intermission.

“Happy with our defense and how hard our kids played,” Patch said. “I thought that set the tone for the game.

“They are a high-powered offensive team. For us to come out, kind of do what we did to them in the first quarter — hold them to three points, really making it tough on them to get a clean look, period, let alone one go in — I think that was the tone of the game and it gave us a jump start.”

The Golden Gophers entered Thursday’s game averaging more than 57 points per game, and the Indians held them to their lowest total of the season by 14 points.

It helped too that Patch expected the Golden Gophers to guard with a 1-3-1. Instead, they came out in a man-to-man defense. Not adjusting fully to the man defense, Fort Recovery rushed shots early on, but that didn’t last long. In spite of settling offensively, Indians scored the first nine points of the game.

Ridgemont, meanwhile, didn’t reach double figures until there were 98 seconds to play before half. By then, Fort Recovery led by 14.

“About halfway through the second quarter we started to settle down a little bit more, relax and run some stuff,” Patch said. The Indians got stronger throughout the first three quarters, scoring 13, 16 and 22 points respectively.

Even in the second half shots didn’t come easy for the Gophers. After going 5-of-16 (31.2 percent) in the first 16 minutes, they were just 4-of-17 after the break and shot 27.3 percent for the game.

“I had some breakdowns, but as a team I thought we played well,” Thien said of the Tribe defense.

The district championship Saturday will be a rematch of a Feb. 15 contest at Fort Site Fieldhouse. While Minster was without junior forward Courtney Prenger, the Wildcats escaped with a 38-35 victory.

“The familiarity will be there with them,” Patch said. “We know what they can do and what they can run on offense. It’s not like they can change their schemes or system for one game.”