By BRIAN SMITH
Sports Editor

WAPAKONETA — So this is how an era ends.

On the floor that two years before served notice of a team on the ascent towards something special.

On the rims that two consecutive years the New Knoxville boys basketball team cut down the nets for district titles, everything rolled off or rattled out.

On a night that the shots wouldn’t fall, one of the greatest Midwest Athletic Conference teams of all-time did.
Forty-nine consecutive wins, three MAC titles and a state championship into the varsity careers of the senior group at New Knoxville, the Rangers’ historic jaunt stalled on the floor at Wapakoneta High School.

Ada wrested control of the Division IV district final game in the second quarter and pulled out the 52-45 win over top-ranked New Knoxville (22-1) on Friday night in front of a sell-out crowd.

“I can’t even talk about it without starting to cry,” New Knoxville head coach Dan Hegemier said. “That’s how much this group means...I can’t think of another group that has accomplished what they’ve accomplished.”
Hegemier said his team simply could not shoot well enough to stay up with the Bulldogs, who now move

onto the Kettering regional next week.
“We just could not put the ball in the hole,” he said about his team’s first loss since a regional final against Georgetown in March 2007. “We got good shots and we’ve got good scorers. We got enough chances, they just wouldn’t drop. We’ve been like that for about two weeks.”

New Knoxville was 15-of-41 from the floor and just 4-of-22 from beyond the arc.

While one team dealt with newfound feelings after a loss, Ada felt redeemed after a years-long struggle in the Wapakoneta district level. 

After winning and cutting down the net, Ada’s 6-7 senior Aaron Cross took the Ohio-shaped district title trophy and held it more than seven feet high in the air, looking up over the purple crowd in the gym with a smile on his face.

“The biggest win of our lives,” Cross said. “After that first run that New Knoxville had, we knew we could win this game.”

Cross had a team-high 19 points for Ada, including a back-breaking three pointer with 1:29 left in the game that gave Ada a 45-39 lead that would never get to within a single possession again.

“I told the kids at halftime that if they could pull this off, they were 16 minutes from immortality,” Ada head coach Chris Sautter said. “Then after the third quarter I told them they were eight minutes from immortality, then four minutes."

And much of Ada success on Friday night could be attributed to a defense that his team was only mildly familiar with — a 1-3-1 zone that attempted to bottle up New Knoxville center Brad Piehl and dared the Rangers to beat Ada from the perimeter.

Ada won the wager and a shocking win.

“Hell, we didn’t even practice that zone for two months,” Sautter said, laughing. “I lied earlier this year when I said we’d never said we’d play zone again this year. You caught me in a lie. Piehl was hurting us inside and that zone saved us a little bit.”

New Knoxville got the shots it wanted against the zone.

“We’ve got good shooters and we never shot the ball well. We were hesitant,” Hegemier said. “Ryan (VanderHorst) got one to go down in the second half, but we never shot it consistently as a team.”

Ada manhandled the Rangers on the glass, too. The Bulldogs outrebounded New Knoxville 36-22, including a 14-6 advantage on the offensive glass.

“We didn’t expect (getting 36 rebounds) against them,” Sautter said. “But we did talk about keeping it one shot at a time. We didn’t want to give up second or third opportunities and I didn’t think we did most of the night.”

Hegemier agreed.

“It was one shot and out every time,” the New Knoxville mentor said. “Ada did a great job on both ends of the floor on the boards. We tried to crash the boards in the second half, but it seemed like we were spinning our wheels in mud.”

New Knoxville’s Brad Piehl led all scorers with 20 points. The Robert Morris-bound Ranger ended his Ranger career with eight rebounds and two assists. He went 6-of-14 from the floor and 7-of-9 from the free throw line.
VanderHorst was the only other Ranger in double-figures with 11 points.

New Knoxville jumped out to a 7-2 lead in the first quarter and the Rangers led 10-7 after one quarter. But Ada went on a 9-2 run to end the first half to take a 24-17 advantage to the locker room.

Ada’s Cross hoisted a one-handed shot from the opposite baseline that went in and out of the rim to end the second quarter— drawing oohs and ahhs in the gymnasium. While the shot didn’t go in, everything else did for Ada in a scoring blitz to end the second quarter the ended up providing the cushion throughout the second half.

A 9-2 run to end the first half was enough to create the lead. Then Ada answered New Knoxville score-for-score in the third and fourth quarters. 

New Knoxville got within three points twice in the second half, only to see the Bulldogs respond right back.

After an Austin Arnett trey drew the Rangers to within 30-27 with 1:30 left in the third quarter, Ada’s Mitchell Faine got an old-fashioned three-point play.

When the Rangers got the game to 42-39 with 2:22 left in the game with a pair of Piehl free throws, a New Knoxville travel and ensuing Cross corner three-pointer helped seal the deal.

Ada was 10-14 from the charity stripe, including five of its last six free throws in the fourth quarter.

New Knoxville never got its offense clicking like it did a year ago in the tournament. A season after scoring 69.6 points per game and beating opponents by an average of 31.1 points per game in the tournament, New Knoxville averaged 48.3 points per contest this postseason.

The win by Ada avenges a 60-54 win by New Knoxville during the regular season on Dec. 27 at Ada High School.

Ada now gets to move out of the district that has stopped some talented Bulldog teams. Moving on was a big relief for Sautter and his team.

“It’s like a huge gorilla got off my back,” Sautter said.  

Ada will play Summit Country Day on Tuesday, March 17 at Kettering Fairmont High School.
Fort Loramie will play in the other game at Fairmont High School against Lockland — the last team before Friday night to beat New Knoxville.