Caldwell is creative, but Hawks move into district title game
Logan Hershberger’s defense proved to be one of the nails in the coffin for Caldwell, and Hiland’s defensive effort led the way to victory.
Coming into Hiland’s Division VI district semifinal contest with Caldwell on Tuesday, Feb. 25 at New Philadelphia High School, Hiland head coach Mark Schlabach was certain of two things: It would be a physical grind of a game, and the Hawks would face multiple styles of defenses.
He was correct on both counts, and while Hiland earned a 57-42 victory, it was a struggle because of both of those attributes.
With its win, Hiland advanced to a Feb. 28 district final at Cambridge, where the Hawks were slated to meet No. 2 seed Woodsfield Monroe Central, which dumped Malvern 63-47 in the other Feb. 25 semi.
“They really mucked it up on us defensively,” Schlabach said of Caldwell.
Hiland faced a series of multiple defensive schemes including a box-and-one on star scorer Nick Wigton, a triangle-and-two on Wigton and Alex Miller, a 1-3-1 zone, a 1-2-2 zone, a 2-3 zone, and a staunch man defense.
“I think they played six or seven defensive schemes against us the last two days of practice,” Schlabach said. “We worked on every single one of those, except the triangle-and-two. There’s only so much you can do.”
He said Caldwell has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the Hawks in the past, so they expected something similar to take place.
Schlabach said in the tapes they had seen Caldwell hadn’t played much of many of those defenses in the regular season, so with the surprise variety of defenses thrown at Hiland, it could have been easy to get frustrated.
“I thought our guys did OK in handling the different styles,” Schlabach said.
Welcome to the East District
Schlabach said every single game in the East District is a typical masher game, filled with hard-nosed defense, and many times it doesn’t equate to pretty ballgames.
“The East District is a physical brand of basketball, and we’ve seen games like this in every single district game over the years,” Schlabach said. “Coaches are well-prepared, and this is the type of game we’ve come to expect.”
Defense sets the tone
Hiland’s calling card for many years has been its pressure half-court defense, and this contest was no different.
Hiland’s multiple guard system presented loads of on-ball pressure, complete with strong help defense. Led by seniors Logan Hershberger and Sam Wengerd and junior Ashton Schrock, the Hawks simply got down and dirty on defense, producing tons of turnovers that never let Caldwell get on big enough runs to capsize Hiland’s lead.
“It took us a little while to get settled in, but we had a big stretch of stops, especially in that second half,” Schlabach said. “I told (assistant coach Paul Zacour) during the half, it felt like we were ahead by five and we were ahead by 17 because we had like eight stops in a row. Defensively, we had to be good because they gave us some fits offensively.”
An unheralded scoring threat
For much of the season, Caleb Yoder hasn’t been a ballyhooed scorer, providing sparks here and there. However, late in the season, he has come on strong, and in this game his effort on the offensive end proved to be a difference-maker.
Yoder came off the bench to score eight straight points in a pivotal second quarter and ended the evening with a game-high 19 points.
Schlabach said it wasn’t difficult to envision a night like this for the junior.
“I thought Caleb did an excellent job of simply working with what the defense gave him,” Schlabach said. “He’s had glimpses where he’s done that throughout the season, but as the season has gone on, he has gotten more and more confident in his game. We have a lot of confidence in him. He’s crafty and smart around the basket.”
In fact, the off-guard position gave the Hawks a big lift. Aside from Yoder, CJ Yoder (eight points) and Caleb Mishler (six) provided a scoring boost in addition to Wigton’s 16 points.
It was even more important because point guard Alex Miller, the team’s second leading scorer, went down early in the second half with a sprained ankle.