March 24,2000

Divine intervention at Schottenstein

By Pat Magers
Sports Writer

COLUMBUS &emdash; St. Henry coach Al Summers suggested there may have been divine intervention. When told that, Worthington Christian coach Ray Slagle said that seemed as reasonable of an explanation as any.

Regardless, there was a wave of emotion throughout the Jerome Schottenstein Center Thursday night when Worthington Christian senior

Jason Weakley's last-second putback attempt seemed to go down, then did a

turnaround and fell out, leaving the Warriors one point short, 54-53, of St.

Henry in a Division IV state semifinal.

The Warriors, unbeaten and top-ranked in the Associated Press poll while working on the defense of the Division IV title they won last year, had rallied long and hard from a 13-point halftime deficit. They were never able to regain the lead, but they did tie the score twice, the last time at 50-50 with 1:19 to play.

The Redskins went back on top by four on a pair of free throws each by Kurt

Woeste and Brent Bohman before Worthington's Scott Hadley canned a 3-pointer to make it 54-53 with 15 seconds to play.

St. Henry's Andy Wourms went to the line with 13 ticks left and missed the shot. The Warriors boarded and went about the business of trying to nail their 27th win of the season.

Mike Hill put up a trey with five seconds left. The shot was off the mark

and Weakley fought off two St. Henry defenders for the rebound and put up a 10-foot jumper that did everything but fall through at the buzzer.

"I would rather have been home in a hot tub than try to live those last 30 seconds," said Summers, the first-year head coach who now has a 24-2 mark. "I hate to say this, but it was almost like the hand of God reached down and knocked that shot out. That thing was in and then it wasn't."

Slagle, who also coached a state runner-up team in 1994, scratched his head at that, although the version given to him was somewhat out of context.

"I can relax a little now, knowing that the hand of God knocked that out," he said. "It's a game; it's not life. And to be honest, it doesn't change much about anything."

For his part, Weakley thought he had a game-winner as well.

"It felt pretty good," he said. "It felt good when it left my hands and I thought it was going to go. But it rimmed out and you can't do anything about

that."

Meanwhile, Bohman went by the evidence, circumstantial though it may have been.

"I saw it in the basket and I was sure it was going down," he

said. "I looked away and then I saw our fans jumping up and down. I figured

that was a good sign."

LOW SCORING; HIGH INTENSITY: The Worthington Christian-St. Henry bash figured to be the shootout of the weekend.

Worthington came into the tournament averaging 89 points per game. The

Warriors topped Fort Recovery 95-90 in three overtimes in last year's championship game and this year topped 100 points five times.

Meanwhile, just two weeks ago, St. Henry set an Ohio team record when it hit 25 3-pointers in a 106-71 win over Upper Scioto Valley in the district

semifinals.

"To hold them to 53 points, I guess that's nice as long as we had the 54 that we had tonight," Summers said. "To be honest, we were hoping for a 110-108 game. "I read in one of the papers that Coach Slagle thought

it would take a score in the high 70s to win it. I thought that was kind of

silly, actually. I was looking for at least the 80s. The big thing is we

were not hitting the 3s and they were not hitting the 3s," he said. "With

that, it turned into a war. It was a hand-to-hand battle out there and

fortunately, we had just enough to win it."

HERE'S MY VOTE: Voting was so close, there were two Mr. Basketball Award winners this year and neither one of them was named Neil Schmitz. But that's because no one asked Summers.

"If there is a better basketball player in Ohio, I haven't seen him," Summers

said of his 6-2 senior. "Some nights he'll score big. Some nights he'll grab 13

or 14 rebounds and some nights, he get a bunch of steals. He had a triple-double for us recently. Whatever it takes.

"He has a heart and head made for basketball," Summers said. "He doesn't have the points average that gets you All-District, but I'd rather have him on my team than anyone around."

Schmitz led the winners with 14 points and 10 rebounds. No other

Redskin was in double figures, but six players finished with between five

and nine points. All-Ohioans Weakley and Sam Smith (14 rebounds) scored 15

and 10, respectively. Hadley knocked down 14 for the Warriors.

EXTRA CHALLENGE: This is St. Henry's fourth appearance in the state boys

basketball tournament and the other three resulted in championships in 1979, 1990 and 1991. It they are to claim another Saturday afternoon, they have to do so without senior Ryan Post, the team's leading scorer this year with a 16.1-point average.

"He broke his hand early in the third quarter and he's done," Summers said. "I'm no doctor, but when I saw him come off the floor, I knew it was broken and I knew he was done."

Post's father, Mike, scored 35 points in the 1979 state title game against Mansfield St. Peter's.

YOU CAN'T HOLD THE FORT: If you are going to lose a tournament game, and every team but one in each division is going to do just that, you might as well

lose to the eventual state champion.

That remains a possibility for Calvert, now that Fort Jennings has advanced to Saturday's 2 p.m. Division IV state championship game. The Musketeers, who turned back the Senecas by six for the regional title last week, bounced Berlin Hiland 71-56 Thursday night.

Fort Jennings, which has the smallest boys enrollment of any of the

schools in the state tourney, meets St. Henry.

IRON FIVE &emdash; Depth is regarded as a plus in any sport, but it is not a requirement for success.

For evidence, check the numbers on Fort Jennings.

Two Musketeer starters, Aaron Utrup and Kyle Liebrecht, went the distance in the win over Hiland.

Matt Metzger played 31 minutes, Kevin Grothouse 28 and Scott Gasser 24.

They also accounted for all but two of the team's 71 points. Grothouse led

with 22 while Utrup (14), Liebrecht (13) and Metzger (11) also finished in

double figures. Gasser checked in with nine.

"We're not deep, but I think we've got five pretty talented players," coach John Von Sossan said. "From the standpoint of putting five out there, yes, this is the most talented team I've coached. But you have to keep in mind, we've never been to the state tournament before. So that says something about these guys. And the other thing is, we've only got 45 boys in the school to begin with."

SO MUCH FOR RANKINGS: The Division IV tournament laid waste to the

weekly ritual called the Associated Press prep poll. The state's top two

teams, Worthington Christian and Berlin Hiland, went down to defeat to

lesser-ranked teams. St. Henry was seventh and Fort Jennings 10th in the

final poll.

Stranger still, this year's Division IV state champ failed to

claim the championship of its league. St. Henry trailed Marion Local in the

Midwest Athletic Conference while Fort Jennings was a notch behind Kalida in

the Putnam County League.