CAREY — The Mohawk Warriors got an opportunity to see what life would be like without star Zach Hayman Friday night.
Hayman, who is nursing a knee injury, entered the game second in the Northern 10 Athletic Conference with a 21.1 per game scoring average, but he was not available to his team in the Division IV sectional championship game at Carey High School.
And, three minutes into the game, the New Riegel Blue Jackets held an 11-5 lead and had the Warriors on their heels.
Still, Mohawk fans had nothing to worry about.
The Warriors went on an 11-0 run from that point and took over control of the game en route to a 61-34 win.
With the win, the Warriors (22-1) advance to the district tournament in Fostoria and will face 17-6 Maumee Valley Country Day on March 5 at 6:15 p.m. New Riegel ends its season at 10-13.
Neither Mohawk coach Paul Dunn or New Riegel coach David Losey felt that Hayman’s loss would hurt the Warriors, despite Hayman’s immense talent.
“These guys are really good, and I trust so much in this senior class,” Dunn said. “We talked about facing adversity and these guys handled it.
“With Kaiden (Hammer) leading the way at the point and a good guard in Austin (Tusing) and Chris (Klopp) was a man in the middle tonight,” Dunn added. “I knew these guys would pick up what we were missing with Zach and they handled it even more so than I could imagine.”
Losey said he hoped Hayman’s loss would hurt the Warriors, but he wasn’t surprised it didn’t.
“No, they are very good, and they have three or four other players that have played a lot of basketball and made a regional trip last year and they weren’t 21-1 just because of Hayman,” Losey said. “You would hope for some slippage and there wasn’t any.”
From the 4:24 mark of the first period to the end of the first half, the Blue Jackets managed just seven points, thanks to relentless three-quarter and half-court pressure from the Warriors. Mohawk held a 34-21 lead at the break.
“After that first quarter, my seniors came to me and were begging for us to get into our press because they knew they wanted to crank it up and I think we forced 11 turnovers in the first half and the best part is I think we scored on a lot of them,” Dunn said. “We were able to take advantage of their mistakes and capitalize and that’s a credit to us.”
Losey said that his team wanted to control Mohawk’s dribble penetration and force them to shoot the ball from the perimeter.
“We wanted to try and focus on Hammer and focus on Klopp in the middle but if we could make them shoot over the top of us that would be a victory,” Losey said.
It didn’t work as well as Losey hoped, however. Klopp led the way with 18 points and Hammer knocked down three 3-point shots and finished with 13. Keith Jenkins scored nine and Tusing and Hunter Gottfried added eight each.
In the fourth period, the Warriors’ lead (31) was more than the Blue Jackets had scored in the game (30).
Nick Reinhart was the only double-figures scorer in the game for New Riegel with 11.
“(New Riegel is) a great 3-point shooting team and I knew we had to keep these guys from getting their feet set. Those guys are dead-knock shooters and we had to keep them contested and we had to keep (Cole) Noftz out of the paint,” Dunn said.
“Early we didn’t do a good job and they broke out to that lead. Noftz was getting as much penetration as he could get, and we switched some defensive guys. We put Kaiden on (Noftz) and he shut down his dribble drive and we did a great job of contesting their 3-point shooters and we gave them limited offensive rebounds.”
The Warriors shot the ball well for three periods, hitting 19 for 39 and finished with 21 of 48 for the night. And Mohawk dominated the glass, getting 33 rebounds to 22 for the Blue Jackets.
“Chris did a great job rebounding and we did a good job pushing the ball and sharing the ball, and obviously, we got the ball inside to Chris as much as we could,” Dunn said.
Box score
New Riegel 14 7 6 7 — 34
Mohawk 16 18 20 7 — 61
New Riegel (10-13): Shots 15-45; 3-pt. shots 3 (Nick Reinhart 3); Free throws 1-3; Rebounds 22; Turnovers 19. Scoring: Brandon Gillig 1 0 2, Cole Noftz 1 0 2, Hayden Hohman 2 0 4, Christopher Acree 1 1 3, Bryce Hohman 2 0 4, Nick Reinhart 4 0 11, Derek Feindel 4 0 8.
Mohawk (22-1): Shots 21-48; 3-pt. shots 7 (Kaden Hammer 3, Hunter Gottfried 2, Keith Jenkins, Landon Snyder); Free throws 12-15; Rebounds 33; Turnovers 9. Scoring: Keith Jenkins 4 0 9, Kaiden Hammer 5 0 13, Austin Tusing 3 2 8, Brock Brause 0 1 1, Landen Snyder 1 1 4, Hunter Gottfried 3 0 8, Chris Klopp 5 8 18.