The first few minutes of Saturday night’s championship game in the Pepsi-Cola Holiday Tournament at Fred Raizk Arena told the story as Wilmington met Blanchester and the Hurricane’s 24-0 run enabled WHS to claim a 75-34 victory.

For Wilmington, it’s their third consecutive Clinton County title, and improves the ‘Cane to 7-3 overall while the Wildcats fall to 3-7 on the year.

Three minutes into the contest, Wilmington jumped out to a 10-0 lead prompting Blan head coach Bennie Carroll to call a timeout. The trend did not change and Wilmington extended the lead before the Wildcats’ Bryson Lewis broke the drought with a corner trey with less than 1:00 remaining in the opening period. At the first quarter break, WHS held a 27-3 commanding lead.

Carroll felt as though his team was pressing and their inability to convert some early shots put the Wildcats at a disadvantage against the talented Hurricane squad. “Our kids were somewhat apprehensive at the start and we missed some shots and things just kind of snowballed,” he said.

Once Wilmington got it going, there was no way his squad could stop them. “They are a nice team and have a lot of talent. They played with a lot of confidence, “he said.

Hurricane head coach Mike Noszka said his team had the right approach from the start. “Tonight we came out really focused and had a real good start, “he noted. Both teams played to a 13-13 stand off in the second quarter, and Noszka felt his team may have lost its intensity. “We did not maintain the same kind of intensity in that second quarter,” he noted.

Noszka felt as though his team turned it up in the third period, with a 22-10 effort as six different players got in the scorebook. Quentin Rollins, who scored nine points in the opening quarter, dropped in nine in the third period. He led all scorers with 17, in just three periods of game action.

Malcolm Heard came off the bench to score12 points, including 11 in the second half. Jordan Berlin had 15 for the game including 13 in the first half. Nyles Williams, inserted into the WHS starting line up, also was in double figures with 13, ten of which came in the first half of play.

For Blanchester, top scorer was Steven White with eight (all in the third quarter), followed by Lewis with seven and Kalib Starks added six points.

Traditionally, the winning team cuts down the nets, but Wilmington chose not to do so and Noszka explained why. “We do not want to minimize the importance of winning the (County) championship but the kids said these are not the nets they want to cut down. Like we’ve said all year, we want to still try and win our conference, and go deep in the state tournament. Those are the nets they (the players) want to be cutting down,” he said.

Both teams will be on the road when the second half of the season resumes. The ‘Cane goes to Walnut Hills in Cincinnati on Friday night, returning to Fort Ancient Valley Conference action. Blanchester gets ready for back-to-back ballgames. They travel to backyard rival Goshen on Friday, then head to Clinton-Massie on Saturday night.

SCORING SUMMARY

WHS 27 13 22 13—75

BHS 3 13 10 8—34

(34) BLANCHESTER (2fg-3fg-ft-tp) Barnes 0-0-1-1, Ballinger 1-0-0-2, Starks 3-0-0-6, Lewis 2-1-0-7, Wiley 0-0-3-3, Slocum 0-1-0-3, White 4-0-0-8, Ross 0-0-2-2, Cook 1-0-0-2. Team Totals 11-2-6-34.

(75) WILMINGTON (2fg-3fg-ft-tp) Rollins 4-2-3-17, Berlin 3-2-3-15, Osterbrock 2-0-0-4, Heard 5-0-2-12, Seeger 2-0-0-4, Arehart 3-0-1-7, Williams 4-1-2-13, Cowin 1-0-1-3. Team Totals 24-5-12-75.