DAYTON – The No. 3 seed Preble Shawnee Arrows defeated the No. 1 seed Williamsburg Wildcats to earn a 61-52 OHSAA DIII District Championship, its second consecutive district title.
“They’re a good team, they’re 23-2 for a reason,” Preble Shawnee Coach Jake Turner said of Williamsburg. “They have good players. Our guys having the experience, being in these situations and moments helped keep that lead. We made some plays when we needed to.”
The game’s leading scorer, Mason Shrout gave the Arrows an early 2-0 lead with a jumper beyond the free throw line, and a Brayden Robinette layup made it a 4-0 game in the opening 50 seconds of the contest.
Williamsburg battled back to grab its largest lead of the night, a short-lived 9-6 advantage at 4:57 in the first. A powering Logan Hawley two-hand slam dunk from the Arrows 6’8” senior gave Shawnee a 15-10 advantage on the team’s way to a 17-11 first-quarter score.
The teams played to a 12-12 second-quarter standoff sending the game to the break with Shawnee holding a 29-23 lead.
Preble Shawnee earned its largest lead of the night, a double-digit 35-23 advantage with Shrout knocking down a long jumper and a free throw at 4:48 in the third. Williamsburg stormed back to close out third period play with a 16-7 run cutting Shawnee’s lead to 3 points at 42-39 with one final quarter to play.
“We knew they weren’t going to go away,” Coach Turner stated. “We had multiple times where we thought we should have got it to 15 and we couldn’t because they made plays.”
Hawley gave Preble Shawnee an early 46-41 lead with a bucket at the rim, Brody Morton drained an Arrows 3-pointer and a layup extending Shawnee’s lead to a double-digit 51-41 advantage followed with a Shrout steal and a breakaway full-court layup upping the Arrows’ advantage to 53-41 with 3:16 showing on the fourth quarter clock.
Eight unanswered Williamsburg points quickly cut Shawnee’s lead to 53-49 with 1:40 remaining in the fourth before Morton answered with an Arrows layup, 55-49 at 1:23; a Robinette layup, 57-49 at 0:36; back-to-back Morton free throws, 59-49 at 0:21 followed by a Wildcats 3-point desperation shot for a 59-52 score at 0:11.4.
Shrout closed out scoring on the night canning back-to-back free throws giving Preble Shawnee an impressive nine-point district championship over the No. 1 seed Williamsburg Wildcats.
“Mason (Shrout) is a high IQ player, he knows how to play the game, he does a great job of not being selfish, he wants to win so he’s going to do whatever helps the team win,” Turner said. “He does a great job of getting a lot of attention but when he gets that attention, making the right decision – we like playing 3-on-3, 3-on-2, we’ll take that number situation, and that’s what we get a lot from team’s trying to take him out with double teams and our other guys make plays, we have a good team.”
“We’re shooting the ball really well, we’re executing at a high level and some of that is because of a lot of the attention Mason is getting,” Turner added. “Refusing to lose mentality and that’s the mentality these guys have, they don’t want this to end. You can tell these guys are hungry and I don’t want this to end either, just like they don’t want it to end.”
Shrout led Preble Shawnee and all scorers with a game-high 19 points.
BOXSCORE:
PREBLE SHAWNEE – M. Shrout 19, I. Blankenship 13, L. Hawley 11, B. Morton 9, B. Robinette 6, C. Roell 2, K. Mills 1 – TOTALS 24 9-12 4 61
WILLIAMSBURG – JJ Miller 16, A. Ervin 15, B. Fisher 12, P. Ayers 6, K. Brogan 3 – 10 8-15 8 52
3-POINTERS
Preble Shawnee 4 (M. Shrout 2, B. Morton 1, I. Blankenship 1)
Williamsburg 8 (A. Ervin 3, JJ Miller 2, K. Brogan 1, B. Fisher 1, P. Ayers 1)
SCORE by QUARTERS
17-12-13-19 61 Preble Shawnee
11-12-16-13 52 Williamsburg
