{"id":138669,"date":"2020-12-29T22:55:52","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T03:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=138669"},"modified":"2020-12-29T22:56:32","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T03:56:32","slug":"defense-carries-knights-to-a-38-36-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2020\/12\/29\/defense-carries-knights-to-a-38-36-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense carries Knights to a 38-36 win"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong>independent sports editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CONVOY — To say Tuesday night\u2019s game between Crestview and Kalida was a defensive struggle is an understatement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crestview held Kalida to single digits in three of four quarters and didn\u2019t allow a single point in the final 7:03, and the Knights handed the Wildcats their first loss of the season, 38-36 at Ray Etzler Gymnasium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
JJ Ward (22) scored all eight of his points against Kalida in the third quarter. Wyatt Richardson\/Van Wert independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe defensive effort was great,\u201d Kalida head coach Ryan Stechschulte said. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve seen a defense like that and it took us a while to adjust. Anytime a defense can have a 6-8 kid standing on the block waiting on you it\u2019s difficult, so kudos to them for a good game plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll probably see them again in March,\u201d Stechschulte added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe came out and did things a little different with a triangle-and-two and tried to take it out of their two best scorers\u2019 hands, and it worked really well in the first half. They took the lead in fourth and it wasn\u2019t working any more so we had to go back to our man-to-man, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve played all year is straight man-to-man defense, and I thought our guys did a good job of digging in and getting in done in the fourth quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tyson Siefker hit a triple that gave Kalida 36-32 lead just 57 seconds into the fourth quarter, but it turned out to be the final time the Wildcats would score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ohio State signee Kalen Etzler converted a pair of foul shots with 5:41 left in the game, then Gavin Etzler hit both ends of a 1-and-1 at the 1:43 mark to tie the game 36-36. 43 seconds later, Kalen Etzler drilled a long left wing jumper to snap the tie, and the Knights were able to hold on from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt definitely gives us a shot of confidence,\u201d coach Etzler said of the win. \u201cWe tried to emphasis to these guys that you don\u2019t get many chances against a team that\u2019s undefeated and for the rest of the year we\u2019re not going to get a chance to play a team that\u2019s undefeated. It\u2019s a tournament opponent, you\u2019re battling for tournament seeds and it\u2019s just something you have to take pride in and get it done on your home court. I\u2019m really proud of our guys tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kalen Etzler scored seven of his game-high 15 points in the first quarter and the Knights grabbed a 12-9 lead. The 6-8 senior added four more in the second quarter and Crestview led 21-16 at halftime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JJ Ward scored Crestview\u2019s first eight points of the third quarter, hitting two treys and a bucket, and the Knights enjoyed a 29-19 lead. However, the Wildcats went on a 14-3 scoring run with two triples each by Jayce Horstman and Brandon Miller, plus five points by Ayden Warnecke, and Kalida took a 33-32 lead into the fourth quarter. Miller went on to finish with 11 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were able to get a double digit lead and they did a great job of stopping our set and we just made one extra pass \u2013 when they switched we made an extra pass to JJ and he hit those three bigs in the third and that was huge,\u201d Etzler explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crestview (6-2) went to the foul line just seven times in the game and converted six, while Kalida had no free throw attempts in the game. The Knights held a 24-19 rebounding advange, with Kalen Etzler pulling down eight, and Kalida\u2019s Luke Erhardt grabbing six.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wildcats had just eight turnovers in the game, while the Knights committed 13 turnovers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crestview is scheduled to host Tinora on Saturday and Kalida (7-1) will travel to Fort Jennings on Friday, January 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scoring summary<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crestview 12 9 11 7 \u2013 38
Kalida 9 7 17 3 \u2013 36<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crestview: Kalen Etzler 4-4-15; Gavin Etzler 2-2-7; Carson Hunter 1-0-3; JJ Ward 3-0-8; Carson Kreischer 1-0-2; Nathan Lichtle 1-0-3<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kalida: Ayden Warnecke 2-0-5; Brandon Miller 4-0-11; Justin Siebeneck 2-0-5; Tyson Siefker 1-0-3; Jayce Horstman 2-0-6; Luke Erhart 3-0-6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent sports editor CONVOY — To say Tuesday night\u2019s game between Crestview and Kalida was a defensive struggle is an understatement. Crestview held Kalida to single digits in three of four quarters and didn\u2019t allow a single point in the final 7:03, and the Knights handed the Wildcats their first loss of the season, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 04:13:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}