Lancers win outright NWC championship

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent sports

It was a tale of two halves between cross county rivals Crestview and Lincolnview Friday night. The Knights controlled the first two quarters and led 29-22 at halftime but the Lancers flipped the script in the second half and rallied for a 57-44 win on Friday. The victory gave Lincolnview an outright NWC championship, the program’s first since the 2015-2016 season.

“Overall, we cannot be more proud of all our guys responding in the second half the way they did, knowing the stakes of the game,” Lincolnview head coach Brett Hammons said. “It was very rewarding and fun watching them celebrate with each other, their families and our fans.”

“Give credit to Lincolnview,” Crestview head coach Doug Etzler said. “They made us work on the defensive end all night long. They were patient and waited until we made a mistake and they capitalized. That is what we wanted to do when we had the bal but we didn’t make them work defensively to defend several passes.”

Crestview’s Owen Heckler hit a pair of first quarter treys and Hayden Perrott, Liam Putman and Will Sheets each scored four points and the Knights led 18-15 at the end of the period. Gavin Evans and Max Hammons combined for nine points. Perrott accounted for seven of Crestview’s 11 second quarter points and the Knights led 29-22 at the break.

“We struggled to find a good rhythm in the first half offensively and they were scoring better than we anticipated,” Hammons said. “We did not play a good first half and our message to the guys at halftime was that if we play our game and play with confidence we would be fine.”

The pep talked worked, as the Lancers outscored Crestview 35-15 in the second half. Chayse Overholt buried two three pointers in the third quarter and Evans added seven points in the period. Meanwhile, Crestview had a single basket by Will Sheets in the quarter, with the remaining five points coming from the foul line. Sheets went on to finish with a team high 13 points. 

Evans added eight more points in the final period and finished with a game high 22 points, while Max Hammons added six of his 10 points in the period. Lincolnview went 12-of-12 from the foul line in the fourth quarter and 17-of-17 in the game.

“Our guys stepping up to the line the second half and making all our free throws was awesome to see and it shows the maturity of our team,” the elder Hammons said. “We were able to make some shots in the second half but most importantly we defended. We only gave up 15 points in the second half and that was the difference in the game.”

“We did a little better job in the first half of moving the ball to get good shots,” Etzler said. “In the second half we had very little movement on offense. We wanted to get the ball inside but we never got the ball reversed to make them guard both sides of the floor. They did a good job of denying Will the post entry, but we didn’t make them work by moving the ball.”

“It’s much harder to guard inside when the ball get reversed a couple of times,” he added.

The Lancers will close out their regular season today at home against Arlington (3 p.m. junior varsity), while Crestview will host No. 1 Delphos St. John’s (5 p.m. junior varsity).

Box score

Lancers  15   7  14  21 – 57

Knights   18 11    7    8 – 44

Lincolnview: Holden Price 1-0-2; Max Hammons 3-4-10; Zander Coil 2-0-5; Jackson Ingledue 1-0-3; Gavin Evans 7-8-22; Chayse Overholt 4-1-11; Marshall Hammons 0-4-4

Crestview: Hayden Perrott 5-0-11; Liam Putman 3-2-8; Cash Hammons 1-2-4; Owen Heckler 2-2-8; Will Sheets 6-1-13

JV: Crestview 50 Lincolnview 41