Oakwood vs Kenton Ridge

The beauty of tournament basketball is the uncertainty, unknown and unthinkable that can occur at any time. When it comes to early round tournament basketball, throw in unpredictable.

Saturday’s action at Xenia High School brought just that. Oakwood, the #2 seed in the Dayton portion of Division IV’s Southwest District, would be facing off with #10 seeded Kenton Ridge. The matchup was a back and forth campaign that truly came down to the final seconds.

Oakwood separated themselves in the 1st quarter with a late 11-2 run to take an 18-13 lead at the first quarter break. Oakwood was depending on their perimeter shooting led by Luke Rubin and Owen Hoersting. Kenton Ridge on the flip side, was letting the Lumberjacks get 2nd chance opportunities while also missing shot after shot from the floor.

The Cougars adjusted and put their foot on the gas to get in the paint and get to the rim. Xavier White specifically took it as a personal challenge and continued to get to the FT line over and over again. After a while, Oakwood’s defense adjusted to take White away from catching the ball. Trey Johnson stepped up in the quarter, providing some more scoring with the reduced attention on himself and others. Kenton Ridge took advantage of Oakwood cooling off and combined with a 7-1 run midway through the quarter, took their first lead 29-28. Oakwood would counter and go back-and-forth with Kenton Ridge for the remainder of the half, forcing a 34-34 tie at the break.

Coming out of the half, Oakwood grabbed the momentum back with two quick buckets to extend the lead to 4. After spotting the lead, Kenton Ridge countered with a run of their own and would take as high as a 4-point lead themselves. As basketball games go, runs are bound to happen. Oakwood would again get back to scoring the ball, going on a 8-0 run near the end of the quarter to regain the lead. While the Lumberjacks were getting to the free throw line, they were leaving lots of points on the floor with numerous misses. 

Kenton Ridge would receive a major blow with under 1:00 in the 3rd quarter. White picked up his 4th foul of the game, forcing him to go to the bench to end the half. Fortunately for the Cougars, Oakwood only took a 2-point lead into the break as the Lumberjacks led 52-50.

With White on the bench for Kenton Ridge, Oakwood knew they had a short window to try and balloon the lead and one of two things could happen. Oakwood would get scoring going quickly and create a gap that couldn’t be surmounted or the Lumberjacks would not be able to pull away and we would get an unpredictable ending.

The former looked most likely as Oakwood quickly got the lead up to 6 points but their free throw woes continued. 

The loss of White in the quarter forced Will Rastatter and Mason Amato to fill in the scoring columns. Their play during the window without White is the main reason why Oakwood was not able to get the game out of hand.

White returned and Kenton Ridge started to chip away at the deficit with Johnson finishing a layup at the 1:50 mark to get the deficit down to 63-62. 

With 36 seconds left, Brennan Shaffer made a layup to tie the game at 64 apiece. 

As it came down to the wire, Oakwood would end up with the ball under the Cougar basket with just 6 seconds left to play. Out of a timeout, the Lumberjacks drew up a play that saw Hoersting come off a screen and get a wide open look at the rim, giving Oakwood a 66-64 lead that would ultimately be the game winner. Kenton Ridge would get the ball inbounded and White would get a shot up at half-court which was long thus ending the game as the Lumberjacks and their fanbase erupted. 

The win allows Oakwood to advance to the District Semifinals where they will face Bellefontaine, a team from the same conference as Kenton Ridge and who split a pair of games with the Cougars during the year. White ended the night with 25 points in a losing effort and did everything he could to keep the Cougars in it as long as possible. Oakwood was paced by Hoersting who finished with a game-high 27 points, on 11-of-13 shooting.