MILLER CITY — If Miller City made a statement in its 67-50 boys basketball win over Fort Jennings on Friday night, it was the same statement it has been making all season.
That message is that the Wildcats could be the best team in the Putnam County League.
With Friday night’s win, they went to 5-0 in the PCL and 10-4 overall with two league games remaining on their schedule.
Pandora-Gilboa, which dropped a heartbreaker, 45-44, to Miller City on Jan. 7, has one PCL loss and every other team has at least two losses in the league.
Mark Kuhlman scored 18 points, including three 3-pointers, and Jacob Kuhlman had 15 points and seven rebounds for Miller City. Noah Otto scored 13 points and also hit three 3-pointers.
Ian Finn’s 21 points led Fort Jennings (5-12, 0-5 PCL). Luke Trentman had 14 points and 11 rebounds.
Moving closer to a league title was the big take-away for Miller City, coach Bryan Kuhlman said.
“I felt our defense was pretty good but our offense was still a little sputtery. That’s going to happen. We’re going to clean it up. But tonight was a good win for us, especially since it was a league game,” he said. “We moved to 5-0 and that’s what it all really was about.”
After Fort Jennings led most of the first quarter, Miller City went on a 14-2 run to go up by 10 points, 22-12, two and a half minutes into the second quarter.
The Wildcats led 29-20 at halftime and took control of the game on back-to-back 3-pointers by Mark Kuhlman in the first 35 seconds of the second half for a 35-20 lead. Fort Jennings never got closer than seven points the rest of the way.
“That set the tone for the second half,” Bryan Kuhlman said about the two 3-pointers to open the second half.
“It allowed us to do a few things that we normally wouldn’t do. While we didn’t shoot extremely well, we played well together and that’s kind of what we’re looking for, to make sure that chemistry is good.
“We’ll find the hot guy at the right time and tonight we found him at certain times and it was enough,” he said.
“In the first half we were something like 4 for 19 on 3-point shots in the first half. That’s not really the percentage we wanted but at least we were taking the shots. You have to take the shots to make them,” Bryan Kuhlman said.
“They didn’t fall for us in the first half but in the second half we were able to maintain the lead and stretch it out a little,” he said.
Miller City shot 41 percent (24 of 58) on field goals and Fort Jennings made 35 percent of its attempts (17 of 49). The Musketeers had a 34-31 rebounding edge. Miller City had 10 turnovers and Fort Jennings had 17.
Miller City’s remaining Putnam County League games are at Kalida, winner of six of its last seven games, next Friday night and at Columbus Grove on Feb. 18.
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