JACKSON CENTER — Does any of this seem familiar?
The Jackson Center boys basketball team will follow on the heels of the girls team that played in the state tournament just last week when they play in the Division 4 state semifinals Friday in Columbus.
The two teams made Jackson Center the first team in county history to send both a boys and a girls basketball team to state in the same season.
“It’s been a great atmosphere,” said Jackson Center head boys coach Scott Elchert. “Really, since November its been a whirlwind around here. The girls volleyball winning the state championship, and now the boys and girls basketball teams going to state. It’s been great, and exciting, and we’re just trying to take it all in.”
Not bad for a school with an enrollment of 50 girls and 37 boys.
The Tigers take on the Lincolnview Lancers on Friday at 2 p.m. The winner returns Saturday at 5:15 to meet either Columbus Wellington School or Cornerstone Christian for the small-school state championship.
It is Jackson Center’s fourth trip to the state boys tournament. The 1963 team became the first team in Shelby County to make it to state and lost in the championship game. The 1985 team won the title on a last-second jumper by Jeff Teeters in the championship game (63-61), and the 2012 Tigers also lost in the championship game.
Lincolnview has been the No. 1-ranked D-4 team in Ohio all season, according to The Associated Press. The Lancers finished the regular season with a 21-1 record, which at the time was a school record for most victories in a season.
The team’s only loss of the season came in early Feburary to the top-ranked D-3 team in Ohio, Lima Catholic, which will be playing in the state tournament starting Thursday. Lima Catholic is coached by Frank Kill, who played on Lincolnview’s 1997 state championship team.
Lincolnview plays in the Northwest Conference, which also includes Spencerville, Delphos Jefferson, Bluffton, Convoy Crestview, Paulding, Ada, Columbus Grove and Allen East. Every school in the NWC reached double figures in wins this season, with five winning 15 or more.
“We’ve had a very good season so far,” said Lincolnview head coach Brett Hammons, who is in his fourth season. “We had seven of our top eight players back from last year, but the one player we lost was our leading scorer. But we had our core group back, and we’ve been able to find a way to win close games, games that came down to the last two possessions. The Northwest Conference was tough, too. And we were lucky to win the district final over Crestview.”
The Lancers don’t have the real big guy in the middle, but have excellent size among the five senior starters, four of whom stand 6-foot-3. Derek Youtsey is among them, and averages 9.6 points and 6.0 rebounds per game, and Chandler Adams, another 6-3 senior, is at 12.3 and 5.1.
Trevor Neate is a 6-3 senior averaging 11.6, Hayden Ludwig a 6-3 senior at 10.4, and Austin Leeth a 5-10 senior at 5.8 points and 3.6 assists per game.
Neate will be playing despite going down with a broken foot in the 20th game of the season. Lincolnview was without him the final two regular-season games and he didn’t return until the district semifinals.
“A couple things stick out right away when you look at them,” said Jackson Center head coach Scott Elchert. “They are very good defensively, and very good on the boards.They make it tough to get offensive rebounds, while doing a tremendous job on the offensive glass themselves. And they have good size. Not the monster inside, but good length and good strength. And I think that’s a contributing factor on why they are so good defensively.
“From everything I’ve seen about Lincolnview, I would say they will be as tough as anybody we’ve played this season,” he added. “They’re experienced, and the chemistry is automatic when you have seven seniors that have played for as long as they have.”
Elchert had two big scorers returning in Drew Sosby and Brady Wildermuth, but even he sounded like he wasn’t expecting the kind of success this team has had.
“Coming into the season, we had three returning starters from last year’s team that made it to the regional and won 23 games,” he said. “But outside of those three, the other guys have no varsity experience. So we were trying to blend them together during the summer and the preseason. But things went well. Our youth became more seasoned, and the league from top to bottom was as tough as I’ve seen in a long time. I can’t emphasize enough how the league has really prepared our kids for the way you have to play in the tournament. In our second game of the year, we went on the road to Houston, and it went right down to the wire. They have the ball with the potential to win it. And we had numerous league games like that. I really would like to give credit to the rest of the teams in the league.”
But he said his kids deserve a huge amount of credit as well.
“This is a group of kids who buy into what their role is,” he went on. “Drew and Brady are the leaders, but all of our other players to a man buy into what their roles are and they perform those roles every day in practice.”
Sosby was named the D-4 co-player of the year in Ohio and averages 18 per game. Wildermuth is a 6-6 center who averages 17.5 points and six rebounds per game.
“Watching them on film, I think Sosby might be the best point guard we’ve seen all year,” said Lincolnview’s Hammons. “He’s going to be a difficult matchup. Down low we’ll have to try to mix it up on their big guy and help out. He’s also going to be tough to guard. And they have (Ethan) Zorn who can flat-out shoot. So that’s a great one-two punch, with Zorn helping out. And I don’t know if we’ve seen anyone comparable to Wildermuth, the way he can step out and shoot.”
“We have to rebound the ball real well,” said Elchert. “This team has great size and I’ve seen them play enough to know they are relentless on the boards. And we need to be able to defend. That’s kinda how we’ve built our program and the way we’ve won the majority of our games this year. And it’s also important as a group that you settle in and start playing, and not get caught up in the emotion of being in the Schott.”
