HOLMES TOWNSHIP — What a difference a year makes.
Last year, Wynford struggled through a five-win season. And worse, Bucyrus beat them at Wynford — 67-62 — for the first time in over 50 years.
Saturday, the one-year Royals’ turnaround was on full display against the Redmen. Wynford hit nine 3-point shots on 36 attempts to pull away from Bucyrus, 70-52, in a Northern 10 Athletic Conference game at Dr. Michael Johnson Gymnasium.
The win moved the Royals to 11-4, 7-3 in the N10, good for a tie for third place with Colonel Crawford.
Offensive rebounding was a glaring factor in the outcome, as Wynford held a 21-8 advantage on the offensive boards, with a more modest 37-31 edge overall. Combine that with a 21-11 difference in turnovers and the Royals got 26 more shots (67-41).
“We lead the league in offensive rebounding,” Wynford coach Mike Smith said. “It doesn’t surprise me when you have a 6-6 junior (Sam McMillan) in the middle. He gets a lot. He’s leading the whole Mansfield area.”
McMillan grabbed 11 boards — six offensive — to lead the Royals. But he had help as 10 different Royals had at least one offensive rebound.
“We talked about that before the game,” Bucyrus coach Scott Gifford said. “We knew, in our zone on that back side, we really had to crash the boards. There had to be five guys rebounding.
“Give Wynford credit,” Gifford continued. “They attacked our weaknesses. They obviously have been scouting us. That’s something we’ve got to work on — back side rebounding.”
The Redmen stayed close early, finishing the first quarter with a 10-9 lead. The Royals hit just three of 16 shots in the frame. Wynford heated up in the second period, hitting 10 of 22 shots to go intermission with a 34-24 advantage.
Grant McGuire scored 10 of his game-high 27 points in the frame and McMillan added nine.
“I didn’t think we shot the ball well at all for us,” Smith said. “I don’t know how many 3s we shot, but it had to be close to 40 (36). But you’re going to have some of these nights.”
Bucyrus (3-12, 0-10 N10) didn’t go away. The Redmen got within six, at 34-28, early in the third quarter on a basket by Malachi Bayless. But that was as close as they could get.
Wynford went on a 19-9 run to the end of the period to expand the lead to 53-37 after three.
“That’s kind of been our story all season. We’re good enough to get there and then we’ve just got to keep on getting there,” Gifford said. “The thing I love about our team, and I say this every game, they don’t give up. They’re relentless and that’s what our program is going to be built on — the fact we don’t give up.”
Defensively, the Royals concentrated on controlling Bayless, who still finished with a team-high 13 points — three points under his average — after scoring only two in the first half.
“We found out last week that Ashton Warren and James Rindfuss are pretty good defenders when they are one-on-one with (the best player),” Smith said. “We went with that again, knowing that Malachi was their only true scorer. We’ll probably keep doing that the rest of the year.”
Bayless got some scoring help. Randy Banks had 11 points and Kavan Combs added nine — including two 3s. Banks and Kam Lewis had five rebounds each.
McMillan supported McGuire’s 27 with 17 points and 11 rebounds. Cainen Allen added 10 points.
“If they hit 3s, we’re going to be OK with that,” Gifford said. “You’ve got to give up something when you play zone. You’ve got to hope they have a bad night. They hit them when they needed to.”
“We told them at halftime to keep shooting,” Smith said. “I was more upset with our defensive effort. I didn’t think we played very good defense. But a lot of that a long shot coming off and they got some easy transition baskets. So, maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought.”
“It comes with experience. The more experience they get the more steady they’ll be,” Gifford said. “With inexperienced players, you get the highs and the lows. Eventually it will even out.”
Wynford also won the junior varsity game, 57-52. K.J. Kotalik had a game-high 23 points to lead the Royals. Chris Neale had 16 for Bucyrus and Georgie Floyd finished with 10.
Box score
Bucyrus 10 14 13 15 — 52
Wynford 9 25 19 17 — 70
Bucyrus (3-12, 0-10 N10): Shots 20-41; 3-pt. shots 3-12 (Kavan Combs 2, Malachi Bayless); Free throws 9-12; Rebounds 31 (Kam Lewis 5, Randy Banks 5); Turnovers 21. Scoring: Kam Lewis 0 6 6, Chris Neale 0 1 1, Noah Burke 3 0 6, Kavan Combs 3 1 9, Dylan Coppler 2 0 4, Malachi Bayless 6 0 13, Brock Frost 1 0 2, Randy Banks 5 1 11.
Wynford (11-4, 7-3 N10): Shots 26-67; 3-pt. shots 9-36 (Grant McGuire 5, Ashton Warren, Drew Johnson, James Rindfuss, Cainen Allen); Free throws 9-15; Rebounds 37 (Sam McMillan 11); Turnovers 11. Scoring: Ashton Warren 2 0 5, Drew Johnson 1 3 6, James Rindfuss 1 0 3, Cainen Allen 2 5 10, Grant McGuire 11 0 27, Sam McMillan 8 1 17, K.J. Kotalik 1 0 2.
JV: Wynford 57-52.