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By Michael Cignoli (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
ROGERSVILLE — For a basketball team that loves adrenaline, few things will get its heart racing like stepping on its home court with a chance to win a conference championship.
That’s a major reason why Logan-Rogersville was able to race out to an early 10-point lead in the Big 8 Crossover on Tuesday, appearing to be on the verge of turning it into a blowout win.
But as East Newton switched up its defense and began slowly chipping away at the deficit, the Wildcats discovered that fear of losing that conference title is an even more effective motivator.
After the Patriots took their first lead of the night late in the third quarter, the Wildcats responded by scoring 16 of the game’s next 19 points and rode the momentum to a 50-42 victory in the annual showdown between the Big 8’s East and West division regular-season champions.
“I think it saved the game for us,” Logan-Rogersville senior guard Kanon Gipson said. “Things were going downhill real quick, but our team lives off adrenaline. That’s why we started out so good. We got into a huddle in the fourth quarter and said we’re not losing the conference championship on our home court.”
Logan-Rogersville led from the onset, as JJ O’Neal blocked East Newton’s first shot of the game and Gipson raced down to score on a layup at the other end of the court. That lead ballooned to 17-7 at the end of the first quarter, but dwindled to 22-20 at the half and vanished entirely when East Newton’s Kyson Lahman hit a jumper with three minutes left in the third.
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The early success was ultimately a curse, as the Wildcats got so confident in their ability to score at will that they all-but abandoned their game plan. They went for long-range passes that could set up highlight-reel dunks, but rarely connected and often resulted in turnovers. After losing the lead, coach John Schaefer told the Wildcats to quit improvising and stick to the script.
“I called a timeout and said ‘Hey, you don’t get to do anything but what I tell you the rest of the way,’” he said. “We let them go too much and run because we’re athletic and we want to make plays, but I think our adrenaline was so much that we were throwing it off the walls and trying to get out and get dunks. We just needed to calm down and get the ball where it needed to get.”
Losing the lead and hearing that message proved to be the shot in the arm the Wildcats needed to return to their first-quarter form, as they promptly went on a tear that included 12 straight points to open the final period. Gipson had eight of his 12 points in the frame, including a pair of layups on back-to-back steals that put the Wildcats ahead by 13, their largest lead of the night.
“We talked about pressuring them a little bit more because we didn’t think they could handle it too well,” Gipson said. “They haven’t faced pressure that much all year. We did it in the first quarter and then we went away in the second quarter. Third quarter, it wasn’t really there. In the fourth quarter we really stepped on it and started pressuring them more.”
The loss snapped a 17-game win streak for East Newton (24-2), which is ranked fifth in the state among Class 4 teams and had rolled through the Big 8 West with a perfect 6-0 record.
Lahman (15 points), Lucas Kimbrough (10) and Gabe Bergen (10) all scored in double-figures for the Patriots, who enjoyed some success with a 2-3 zone defense that caught the Wildcats off guard for most of the second and third quarters. But they were unable to extrapolate that over the whole game, as Logan-Rogersville had too many weapons for the Patriots to stop. Jonathan Dunn had 15 points for the Wildcats, while Max Goff and Zach Bergmann added eight apiece.
“If they get space, they’re really hard to defend,” Patriots coach Kyle Fields said. “If we could make it a half-court game, I thought we had a really good chance. But we had some turnovers that really hurt us and if Dunn and Gipson get out in the open floor, then it’s really hard.”
Logan-Rogersville, which won the Big 8 East after also going 6-0, improved to 18-5 on the year and are ranked 10th among teams in Class 5. The Wildcats will play Parkview on Thursday before beginning the Class 5 District 11 tournament Monday against McDonald County.
“We’ve been playing well,” Schaefer said. “It’s just the little things. Our athleticism and defense has been as good as it’s been lately and that’s the thing that’s keeping us surviving in tough games.”
