Brock Netter, Staff Writer
Southern Ohio Sports Authority is presented by OhioHealth.
ATHENS — What a year to be a Minford Falcon.
Following a fall season where the school’s boys and girls soccer programs clinched trips to the Final 4, and in the same season the girls hoops team made an Elite 8 run, Minford’s boys basketball team is the latest group to earn statewide notoriety.
Each of those accomplishments mark the first in school history.
Playing a stellar second half on both sides of the ball, the Falcons (26-1) outscored the Panthers by a 28-15 margin in the third and fourth quarters to earn a 55-40 victory over Chesapeake — clinching the program’s first-ever regional championship.
CREDIT: Erica Fike/SOSA
“I thought Chesapeake had a great defensive game plan and took us awhile to adjust,” Minford coach Josh Shoemaker said. “Then we just started grinding. But tempo was everything. We just willed ourselves to a team defensive win.”
Maddox Kazee opened the night with the first five Chesapeake points, but Myles Montgomery, Bennett Kayser and Curtis Glenn combined for a 6-0 run to give Minford a 7-5 lead.
Kaden Perkins then scored three points for the Panthers, but Kayser led another 6-0 Falcon run to give Minford a 13-8 lead. He later connected on a trifecta before the buzzer, giving him 11 first-quarter points and the Falcons a 16-10 lead.
Kayser opened the second with a rebound and a put back, before Curtis Glenn canned a triple to put the Falcons ahead 21-15.
The Panthers (23-4) answered with an 8-2 run as Karson Frecka tallied an old-fashioned three-point play, followed by five straight points from Kazee to force a 23-23 tie.
But Kayser scored the Falcons’ last four points to keep his team ahead 27-25 at the break.
“We got to halftime and we were up two points. We thought that Kazee had a great first half and we had guarded him really well. We made him work. So we said, ‘Boys, this is right here. If I told you at the beginning of the season that you were up two in the regional final and we’re not in major foul trouble, would you take it?’ Everybody was like, ‘Yeah we’d take that.'”
It took a couple of minutes for either team to find some offense in the third, but Minford got it first in the form of back-to-back 3’s from Jackson Shoemaker, taking its largest lead of the night, up to that point, at 33-25.
Shoemaker continued to cook, scoring four more alongside two free throws from Montgomery, carrying Minford to a 12-2 margin in the third to take a 39-27 lead into the fourth.
“[Jackson Shoemaker] always steps up big for us,” Josh Shoemaker said. “We always know he’s going to hit a big shot. He’s not scared to shoot it. We thought that last game, even on his misses, he looked good. He did exactly what a senior needs to do in a big moment. We’ll always remember him coming out in the third quarter and setting the tone.”
And that was all she wrote.
The Falcons had way more gas in the tank on both sides of the ball, so much so that the Panthers didn’t score their first field goal of the second half until the 3:38 mark in the fourth.
And by that time, it was already too late as the Falcons soared into the Final 4.
“The biggest thing was how we played defense in the second half,” Shoemaker said. “We wanted it. We sat down and guarded, we starting talking and rebounding, and we went to war on the glass. When we adjust, we think our style is a tough style to play. Eventually, Chesapeake starting missing shots and we went to town on defense.”
Kayser finished the night with 23 points and nine rebounds to lead Minford while Jackson Shoemaker added 12 points and seven boards. Montgomery also chipped in with 12 points.
“Bennett was just being Bennett and it got other guys going,” Shoemaker said of Kayser. “Curtis Glenn hits a big 3, Kade Glockner drives and gets it to Jackson and he hits a big one. But he ain’t done. He hits another from the top of the key. Those were the plays that drove this win.”
For Chesapeake, Kazee finished with 14 points and six rebounds while Perkins had nine points.
While Chesapeake’s season comes to an end, Minford returns to action at 4 p.m. on Saturday at the ECO Center in a Division V state semifinal against Cleveland Heights Lutheran East, who beat Richmond Heights by a 64-59 final to advance out of Region 17.
“This is the first time in school history, so we’ll always have that,” Shoemaker said. “But for me, it’s a culmination of 13 years of basketball with these guys. All the biddy tournaments, getting them into preschool together and then mixing grades when we got in high school, adding a Curtis Glenn and an Ashton Reeder, it just makes this even more special. We’ve all been on this journey together. They’ve always played together in a world of transfers. This is just something they’ll never forget.”
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