Van Wert’s Aidan Pratt looks to make a pass during the Cougars’ 69-43 win Saturday against Defiance in a Division II district final at Liberty-Benton. Pratt had a team-high 21 points.
David Trinko | The Lima News
FINDLAY — It all came down to one trait for Van Wert’s boys basketball team Saturday night: Intensity.
The Cougars had it and Defiance didn’t, as Van Wert won the program’s ninth district championship with a 69-43 win in the Division II Liberty-Benton District.
“Tonight and the past few games and few weeks, we really brought the defensive intensity to start off the game,” said Aidan Pratt, who led Van Wert with 21 points, including 11 points in the first quarter as Van Wert jumped out to a 17-8 lead. “I think that carries some weight throughout the rest of the game. I think we overwhelmed them a little bit to start, and we just kept going the rest of the night.”
The Cougars (18-7) had four players in double-figures, with Carson Smith (16 points), Luke Wessell (10 points) and Garett Guntez (10) joining Pratt. Smith hit a perfect 6 for 6 from the three-throw stripe in the third and fourth quarters, as Defiance resorted to putting Van Wert to the free-throw line in an unsuccessful attempt to come back.
Van Wert will play Rossford in the regional semifinals at 8 p.m. Thursday at Bowling Green State University. Defiance ends its year with a 21-5 record.
Pratt offered a showstopper defensive play with 3:14 left in the fourth quarter, tapping the ball away from a Defiance player, sprinting the length of the court with his dribble and delivering a dunk that brought the crowd to its feet and pushed Van Wert to a 26-point lead, its biggest of the game.
That was after another athletic play to end the third quarter, when Pratt dashed through the lane for a layup, then stole the inbounds pass and hit a 3-pointer as the buzzer sounded.
“We’ve kind of put our names in the history book, and we still get to prepare like crazy for next week,” said Van Wert coach Ben Laudick, who played for the Cougars in the 1990s and now guides his alma mater.
Defiance just had trouble getting itself to play the way it did on its way to 21 wins this season.
Bradyn Shaw had a team-high 16 points, including four driving buckets in the first quarter. Cayden Zachrich scored 17 points despite being held scoreless in the first and third quarters. His efforts included three 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, when the game was already out of hand.
“We were a little bit impatient,” Defiance coach Bryn Lehman said. “I think they did pack the paint a little bit, although Bradyn did have those four layups early, where they didn’t plug those gaps. We just didn’t share the basketball well.”
The Bulldogs made it look like it could be more of a game in the second quarter, using an 8-2 run to pull within five points midway through the second quarter. Van Wert responded with two 3-pointers to halt that comeback.
Ultimately, it came down to the defensive intensity in keeping Shaw and Zachrich at bay.
“They have a two-headed monster, so we knew we had to do our best to keep Shaw in front of us and limit Zachrich’s touches as much as we could early on,” Laudick said. “If both of them got going, we knew we’d be in a lot of trouble tonight.
“That’s a credit to our guys, buying into what we were trying to do.”
