Lancers win district championship trophy

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent sports

MILLBURY — A one point deficit at the end of the third quarter did nothing to deter Lincolnview.

Trailing 33-32 to start the final period, the No. 1 seed Lancers outscored second seeded Gibsonburg 20-7 the rest of the way, which gave Lincolnview a 52-40 Division VI district championship win over the Golden Bears at Lake High School on Saturday.

Holden Price drilled a pair of triples in the fourth quarter, Marshall Hammons added five points and Max Hammons added four points in the period, as the Lancers improved to 20-5 and moved on to next Thursday’s Sweet 16 against a very familiar opponent, the Crestview Knights.

“I thought we did a good job of taking care of the basketball, especially in the fourth quarter when they tried to trap us a little bit,” Lincolnview head coach Brett Hammons said. “We were able to execute and it wasn’t just one guy or two guys. If you look at our scoring column, we had six guys in the book. We weren’t phenomenal from the free throw line for the first time this year (17-of-31), but Holden made a huge three for us – he stepped up and hit big shots for us when we needed him to.”

“We knew Gibsonburg was going to give us issues,” he continued. “We didn’t have the size to matchup with their big guy (6-4 junior Hunter Wasserman) and they went to him early but all in all, I thought we did a good job for 32 minutes.”

Wasserman scored nine points in the first half, but was held to just three more the remainder of the game.

Things looked good for Lincolnview early on, as the Lancers led 14-7 at the end of the first quarter, with Chayse Overholt hitting a pair of threes and Max Hammons adding five points.

“We talked about how we needed Chayse to make some big shots for us and he did a great job to get us going,” Hammons said.

Hammons added seven more points in the second quarter and Lincolnview lead 26-21 at halftime.

Gavin Evans was saddled with a pair of early fouls but Grant Zielke came off the bench and helped hold down the fort.

“He came in and battled and he wasn’t going to let their big kid push him around,” Hammons noted, and added 6-7 freshman Emryn Hatfield added valuable minutes off the bench.

Lincolnview will meet county foe Crestview in the regional semifinals at 8 p.m. Thursday at Bowling Green State University. The Lancers topped the Knights 57-44 on February 13, a win that gave Crestview the outright NWC championship. It’s the first time the two teams have met at the regional level.

“Credit Crestview for the win they had Friday night over a tough Spencerville team,” Hammons said. “They did a lot of really good things and we have to prepare for them. I know we played them late in the year but they’ve obviously continued to get better and they’re in the regional semifinals for a reason.”

Box score

Lincolnview  14  12   6  20 – 52

Gibsonburg    7  14  12   7 – 40

Lincolnview: Holden Price 3-1-9; Max Hammons 4-8-17; Zander Coil 2-1-5; Gavin Evans 2-2-6; Chayse Overholt 2-1-7; Marshall Hammons 2-4-8

Gibsonburg: Aiden Morant 3-0-6; Reece Walby 3-1-10; Xander Ziimmerman 3-0-9; Luke Foster 0-1-1; Chuy Rodriguez 1-0-2; Hunter Wasserman 5-2-12