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Versailles
senior Mitchell Campbell looks for a passing lane during a
game played recently
against Minster. Campbell played his last game at
Versailles Friday against New
Knoxville, scoring nine points as the
Tigers gained a 69-63 MAC victory.
CNO File Photo by Dylan Knoop
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Versailles gets
hard fought victory
New Knoxville hangs tough
By George Starks
See below for the rest of Friday’s results.
VERSAILLES- New Knoxville gave Versailles everything it wanted before
dropping a tightly contested 69-63 Midwest Athletic Conference decision
Friday.
It was a night when the Rangers were like a bad penny, they wouldn’t go
away. With Versailles holding leads of 17-10 and 32-20, the Rangers
closed the gap to 10 at 47-37. Versailles went up 60-44 with 3:53
remaining in the game.
That’s when things started to come unglued for the Tigers.
Led by 26 points on the night by Lucas Leffler, the Rangers started to
burn the nets and with one minute remaining, had closed to a 64-60
count. With 34.2 seconds remaining, New Knoxville was within three at
66-63 after Leffler hit for two and was fouled in the process.
It was a poor defensive effort on the part of the Tigers that had coach
Scott McEldowney a little concerned.
“It wasn’t a very good defensive effort tonight,” said McEldowney. “We
just seemed a step slow all night and that’s got to get better. For
whatever the reason, we’ve been like that all week where we just seem
tired. I don’t know if there’s bugs going around or what but we’re not
moving the way we need to move defensively. The mental part of it,
position wise, we’re just not seeing the ball and we’re following our
man too much. Defense has got to come back to where it was a couple of
weeks ago.”
While the defense lacked, allowing the Rangers to stay within reach,
the offense was no better at times and McEldowney touched on that
effort.
“I think I’ve seen it a couple of weeks ago where it seems like we’re
trying to outshoot people rather than play good offense,” McEldowney
pointed out. “We scored plenty enough points tonight. Our ball movement
could have been much better. Yeah we put up 69 points and you expect to
win but we’re not used to giving up these big points that we’ve been
giving up the past two MAC games.”
Led by senior Mitchell Campbell all season, averaging just over 15
points a game, Campbell was held to nine points Friday. Picking up the
slack was Chad Winner with 23 points on the night, up from his 14.1
average. In addition, freshman Kyle Ahrens netted 19 in support to help
aid in the Tiger victory.
“Chad has been shooting extremely well for us and kind of went off a
little bit,” said McEldowney. “He is one of the best inside players in
the conference and he’s still not seeing enough touches.”
Ahrens scored 12 of his 19 in the fourth frame, netting two big fouls
shots to secure it with 7.7 second remaining.
“Kyle does so much with just effort alone. He gets so many offensive
rebounds and he has a knack to get offensive rebounds and get to the
line in the process,” McEldowney said of his freshman. “Those extra
chances come up huge.”
The Tigers (17-2, 6-2) had one more MAC game to play, that being
against Parkway Saturday.
Friday’s results
Vandalia 65, Greenville 32
Versailles 69, New Knoxville 63
TV 72, MV 35
FM 43, Ansonia 32
Bethel 58, Bradford 34
Arcanum 48, Covington 43
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