Defiance knocks off Van Wert home

VAN WERT — Not many teams have come into Van Wert and beat the Cougars in boys basketball this season.

But Defiance is no ordinary team, as it showed when it took a 57-47 win over Van Wert on its homecourt on Friday night.

The No. 4-ranked Bulldogs (15-0, 6-0 Western Buckeye League) tightened their hold on the WBL lead and became only the second visiting team to win in nine games at Van Wert this season.

“No doubt about it, they’re very good here and I think they shoot it better here than when they go on the road. We knew it was going to be a tough basketball game,” Defiance coach Kirk Lehman said. “I was proud of the way our guys played.”

Anthony Kidston scored 14 points and Josh Scott had 10 points for Defiance, which was ranked fourth in Division II in last week’s Associated Press state basketball poll.

Jacob Myers scored 15 points and Joey Hurless had 10 points for Van Wert (10-4, 4-2 WBL), which entered the game as one of three teams tied for second in the WBL. Reggie Phillips and A.J. Smith each scored nine points.

Defiance jumped out to a 29-23 halftime lead, but saw its lead dip to two points at 29-27 when Myers hit back-to-back hoops in the first minute and a half of the second half.

But that was as close as the Cougars could get and Defiance built its lead up to as much as 14 points late in the game.

The turning point in the game might have come a little earlier than the second half, though, Van Wert coach Dave Froelich said.

He pointed to a five or six-minute stretch in the second quarter as maybe the most costly segment of the game for his team.

“That’s kind of where the game got away from us a little bit. We can’t dig a hole against a team like that and try to come back. Good teams make you pay,” Froelich said.

Van Wert led 18-14 early in the second quarter, but Defiance finished the first half on a 15-5 run. A key component of that turnaround was when Defiance players took the ball to the basket several times on one-on-one drives where they simply got a step on their defender.

“Our guys are really good at that,” Lehman said about his players’ one-on-one drives. “We’ve done it other times. Our guys are really good at getting to the rim. But that’s probably the most we’ve done it for a whole game overall.”

Froelich said, “We were on the verge several times of making it interesting and we just couldn’t get that big bucket or big stop and a bucket. But that’s why they haven’t been beaten yet. They make you pay.”

One area where the Bulldogs made Van Wert pay was defensively. The Cougars shot 35 percent for the game (16 of 45) and hit only 33 percent in the second half.

“I thought our defense was huge. We were very aggressive when we had to be,” Lehman said.