FULL REPORT: MENNO SLIPS PAST FA/MARION
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Paityn Huber picked the right time to find her touch from the outside.
With Menno trailing Freeman Academy/Marion midway through the fourth quarter of the Region 5B Tournament play-in game Monday afternoon, Feb. 21 in Menno, the senior knocked down her first three-pointers of the game in the span of 38 seconds on back-to-back possessions that gave the Wolves both momentum and badly-needed points that ultimately carried them to an exciting 32-30 win.
“She made them at the right time,” said Menno head coach Tim Hagedorn, who will travel with his team to Centerville (18-2) to face the top-seed Tornados in Region 5B play Tuesday night. “I kept telling her, ‘When you’ve got a look you’ve got to take a shot; it doesn’t matter if you’ve missed all the rest.’”
Huber’s first triple came at the fourth quarter’s 4-minute mark and tied the game at 25-25 and her second came with 3:22 to play to make it 28-27 in favor of Menno. The Bearcats turned the ball over on their next possession and Abby Bender gave the Wolves a 30-27 lead on a nice move to the basket with 3:40 to play.
But the game would go down to the wire.
Freeman Academy junior Jada Koerner connected on her second three-pointer of the game to make it 30-30 with 1:27 left, Bender connected again from close range on Menno’s next possession to make it 32-30, and the Bearcats had the ball last with a chance to tie or win. But two shot attempts in the final seconds by Marion junior Alivea Weber — the first from the perimeter just outside the paint and a second after she nabbed her own rebound — missed the mark and Menno escaped with the win.
“I told her I would take that shot from her to tie or win the game any day of the week,” FA/Marion head coach Nathan Epp said of Weber’s attempts at the end. “It just came up a little short.”
No. 8 vs. No. 9
Monday’s game between the No. 8-seed Wolves and No. 9-seed Bearcats came four days after the regular-season finale in which Menno took down FA/Marion with ease, 55-31.
Given that, Hagedorn figured the region game would be a battle.
“It’s always tough to beat a team back-to-back,” he said after Monday’s win. “I knew they would come in ready.”
Said Epp:
“We knew we had to play a really physical game coming in and we didn’t back away from contact. The girls rebounded well — we had a few too many silly turnovers — and played a good, solid game to give ourselves a chance to win.”
The Bearcats built a 6-2 lead on three-pointers by Koerner and Weber and then a 13-7 lead at the half thanks in part to a second three-pointer from Weber, who would finish with three from downtown and a game-high 11 points.
“She’s just fun to watch,” Epp said of his point guard, who also had eight rebounds, three assists and a pair of steals to lead FA/Marion.
“They were just playing with a little more intensity,” Hagedorn said of the Bearcats in that first half. “Teams who beat somebody earlier by 20 points are going to have a little sluggishness, and we certainly did.”
“We were frustrated,” the coach continued, “and I told them to just fight through it.”
Menno did, and as a result chipped away in the second half. They took a 17-16 lead on a Grace Nusz three-pointer — her second of the quarter and who would finish with a team-high 10 points — and were within three at 20-17 going into the final period.
FA/Marion managed to keep the Wolves an arm’s length away until the very end thanks in large part to Kallie Johnson, a Marion eighth grader coming off the bench who drained a three-pointer and had two other field goals in the fourth period to account for seven of the Bearcats’ final 10 points.
But Huber and the Wolves had the last word, outscoring FA/Marion 10-5 in the final four minutes to stave off the upset-minded Bearcats. The win moved Menno to 5-16 while FA/Marion finished what was an encouraging 2021-22 campaign with a 4-16 mark.
“I would hope they use this as motivation to work on the things they need to work on,” Epp says of this year’s senior-less team. “We have to be better offensively to be able to win games like this. We’ve got to be better ballhandlers and improve our game awareness.”
“This one hurts because we played well enough to win,” the coach continues. “That’s the type of mentality we need to have in this program; losing hurts, but we have to make the switch from being upset because we expected to lose to feeling like we could have won.
“The goal is to use this to motivate them to get better.”
MENNO – Grace Nusz: 10 points, 8 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals, 1 block; Abby Bender: 8 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists; Paityn Huber: 6 points, 7 rebounds, 1 steal; Bridget Vaith: 3 points, 8 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals, 1 block; Ashton Massey: 1 point, 5 rebounds, 1 block.
FA/MARION – Alivea Weber: 11 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 1 block; Kallie Johnson: 7 points, 2 rebounds, 1 steal; Jada Koerner: 6 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 3 blocks; Leah Goodwin: 2 points, 6 rebounds; Estelle Waltner: 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal.
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