By Dana Harding (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Republic, Mo. — When he was needed most, Ozark’s Quinn Nelson delivered.
Held to just 6 points through the first three and one-half quarters, the 6-foot-3 senior scored 7 in the final four minutes of play to help Ozark hold off a late Republic rally and secure a 56-50 victory Tuesday evening.
Points are always nice in crunch time, but Nelson’s biggest play of the game was an offensive rebound.
While Ozark led by as many as 12 points with under three minutes to play, a host of missed free throws (9 in the fourth quarter, alone) prevented the red Tigers from closing things out in a more traditional fashion.
Capitalizing on those free throw misses, team orange rallied with a barrage of 3-pointers from junior Broc Smith, sophomore Race Looney and junior Trent Rackley.
When the smoke finally cleared, Republic found itself down a mere 4 points with 20 seconds left to play.
Continuing the orange momentum shift, Ozark senior Curt Gracey missed a pair of free throws that should have given Republic another opportunity to trim the deficit.
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Should being the key term in this instance, as Nelson had a different outcome in mind.
As Gracey’s miss rattled off the rim, Ozark’s workhorse went up and collected the ball.
“On those free throws, obviously, we’re not guaranteed to make them,” Nelson said. “We missed a lot today — and you never know how that rebound’s going to bounce — so you always have to ready for it. Luckily, it went my way, I got it, went to the rim and got fouled.”
Ozark head coach Mark Schweitzer wasn’t surprised by the play.
“Quinn’s rebound was huge,” Schweitzer said. “He’s sneaky athletic, he’s crafty and he saw an opportunity to deke the guy with a baseline spin move, and the ball luckily came off right there to him. It was a huge rebound, but we’ve got to do a better job at the free throw line.”
Ozark’s difficulties at the line left a sliver of hope for the Republic faithful; however, Nelson quickly converted both attempts to stretch the red Tiger lead back to 6 points.
“Free throws are something we preach upon ourselves,” Nelson said. “Not only this game, but other games we’ve missed free throws — myself included — and it’s cost us a couple games on that. So, I just practice those a lot, muscle memory came into play and I was able to knock those down.”
After Hunter Creek, Republic’s lone senior, hit a shot with 11.9 seconds remaining, Nelson was again fouled on the Ozark inbounds play.
Two more free throw conversions hit the scorebook — the game’s final points — and Ozark secured its undefeated run through the Central Ozark Conference Large Division.
While the late-season score won’t have any bearing on next week’s district matchups, both teams desperately wanted to claim a victory.
First and foremost for Ozark was an opportunity to finish the conference with a spotless, 8-0 record, as well as extract a bit of revenge. Republic toppled the red Tigers 51-45 during December’s Blue & Gold Tournament.
“Even though we’d already won the COC, we wanted to make it undefeated,” Nelson said. “It wouldn’t have really felt good winning [the conference title], but losing this game.”
Senior Payton Nichols led Ozark with 16 points, capitalizing early on interior opportunities in Republic’s defense due to the team shadowing Nelson at every turn. The 6-foot-4 forward’s first-half efforts helped Ozark jump out to a 20-13 advantage at the break.
“If teams are going to do box-and-ones and junk defenses on Quinn to try and limit possessions, we’ve got to have other people step up,” Schweitzer said. “Nichols is that next option. I thought Payton did a great job. I told him if he passed the ball, unless he was double-teamed, he was coming out. We just wanted him to be in that aggressive mindset.”
For Republic head coach Trevyor Fisher, the defensive game plan for Nelson opened up other unfortunate opportunities for other players.
“[Nichols] is a very good post player,” Fisher said. “When you try and take away one good player, usually another one will step up. They’ve got a lot of good pieces, and Nichols really hurt us on the backboards. He was the difference there in the first half.”
After the game, Schweitzer talked about one of his team’s most pressing needs for improvement heading into district play.
“We’ve got to do a better job at closing out games with the free throws,” Schweitzer said. “You’re not going to win a district championship unless you can close those games out. We were getting stops — that’s the problem — but we weren’t getting any distance because we weren’t making the free throws.”
Despite the loss, Republic and Fisher have plenty of positives to take away from the game as the team prepares itself for the elimination games to come.
“Give our guys credit for not folding,” Fisher said. “We kept going at them, got to the basket, made some plays and got some defensive stops. Proud of our effort and for giving ourselves a chance to win down the stretch.”
Smith, Looney and Creek all finished in double figures for Republic with 16, 12 and 10 points, respectively.
Ozark (20-5) travels to Bolivar Thursday, Feb. 22 to finish up its regular season. Both teams begin district play Tuesday, Feb. 27. Ozark hosts the Parkview/Branson winner in District 11 semifinals, while Republic (17-7) travels to Neosho to face Joplin in the District 12 semifinals.
Varsity Final: Ozark – 56, Republic – 50
Ozark 11 09 17 19 — 56
Republic 09 04 16 21 — 50
Ozark scoring: Payton Nichols – 16, Quinn Nelson – 13, Parker Hanks – 5, Curt Gracey – 5, A.J. Elliott – 4, Parker Ramsdell – 4, Caleb Holzer – 3, Peyton Skipworth – 3, Kristian Cooper – 3
Republic scoring: Broc Smith – 16, Race Looney – 12, Hunter Creek – 10, Trent Rackley – 5, Tucker Thomas – 4, Drew McMillin – 3
Frosh Final: Republic – 46, Ozark – 33
(Oliver Welch – 16 points)
JV Final: Ozark – 63, Republic – 60
(Troy Davidson – 20 points)
