MUNCIE — For the first couple of minutes of Wednesday’s Muncie Central Sectional opener, Mt. Vernon showed the signs of a young team with little to no postseason experience.
The two-time defending Class 4A Sectional 9 champion Marauders have just one player, senior Eli Bridenthal, familiar with the rigors of win-or-go-home basketball.
Against host school Muncie Central, in the historic 6,000-plus capacity Walnut Street Fieldhouse, the Marauders, just two minutes into the game, trailed 8-0.
There was no timeout to settle down the Marauder starters, which include the veteran standout Bridenthal and four talented, but youthful underclassmen, three of which are in their first year of high school.
“I was waiting to see how they would come together and figure it out,” interim head coach Nate Bingham said.
Freshman Luke Ertel scored the next eight points, hitting two free throws and two 3-pointers. Frosh R’mani Wells hit a 3 with 1:22 left in the first quarter to give Mt. Vernon its first lead.
The Marauders led the rest of the way, pulling away in the final quarter for a 62-32 victory.
Mt. Vernon will take on Anderson, a winner over Greenfield-Central in Wednesday’s second quarterfinal game, in the second of two semifinal contests Friday.
“We’ve been talking about togetherness for the last two weeks,” Bingham said. “It would have been really easy to bend and break right there being down 8-0 and get really discouraged, but they did a good job coming together and fighting through that adversity and coming out with a win.”
“It’s a different environment playing sectional ball,” Ertel said. “I think everybody was a little more juiced and felt like we were a little too nervous coming out. It was 8-0 and we kind of settled down.”
Mt. Vernon got a boost from the newcomers, but a couple of seniors played big, too.
Off the bench, 6-foot-6 senior Adam Hackett started the second quarter picking up where Ertel and Wells left off. He hit three second-quarter 3-pointers and had 11 points in the period. They were his only field-goal attempts of the game.
He finished with 13 points, adding 4 of 4 from the free-throw line.
“That was a big-time spark,” Bingham said of Hackett, who was a starter earlier in the season. He was the first player off the bench Wednesday and was the team’s second-leading scorer behind Ertel, who finished with 16.
“To be able to rely on a senior to come off the bench and except his role and play to his strengths, we talked before the game about playing to our strengths and (Hackett) really did that,” Bingham said. “He’s a knock-down shooter for us and he didn’t try to do too much. He waited for his teammates to make plays for him and his teammates did a great job finding him, especially when he started to get hot.”
Though a senior, it was Hackett’s first tournament game, too. He missed all of last season with an injury.
Muncie Central got the Mt. Vernon lead down to six in the third quarter, but the Marauders were able to stretch it back into double figures. Bridenthal scored on a rebound bucket with one minute remaining in the third to extend the lead to 13, 38-25. Muncie’s Daniel Harris hit a buzzer-beating 3 to cut it to 10 heading into the final period.
Harris’s shot didn’t give the Bearcats the momentum they needed. Mt. Vernon scored 18 of the first 19 points of the final quarter and cruised the remainder of the way into Friday’s semifinals.
Bridenthal also scored in double figures with 11, all in the second half.
Another frosh starter, guard Julien Smith, had seven points, all in the second half. Wells also finished with seven.
Bingham said he was eager to see how his young team would do in their first sectional game, especially in the fieldhouse against the host team.
A good host team, too. The Bearcats finish the year 15-8, the same record the Marauders will take into the semifinals. They were a 4-win team last year.
“I was really excited to see how they would handle their first sectional game, in the environment,” Bingham said. “This group’s pretty special. They might get punched in the mouth but they have no problem wiping it off and getting back up and throwing twice as many punches. That’s what they did tonight. They really fight beyond their years. They don’t fight like freshmen. They buckle down and get it figured out like upperclassmen. It’s a special group of freshmen and a real special team overall.”
The Marauders hit nine 3-pointers and finished the game 17 of 19 (89.4 percent) at the free-throw line.
“I think it speaks to the intensity and heart of our team,” Bridenthal said on how the team bounced back from the early deficit. “In practice, there is no quit in these guys. I love all my teammates, they’re never going to quit.”
–
Mt. Vernon 62 , Muncie Central 32
Muncie Central;8;10;10;4;—;32
Mt. Vernon;11;15;12;24;—;62
Muncie Central (15-8): DeMarkis Cole 1 0-0 2, Josiah Ullom 4 0-0 10, Antonio Gore 1 3-4 5, Daniel Harris 3 5-7 12, Brady McNabb 1 0-0 3, Princeton Young 0 0-0 0, LJ Strange 0 0-1 0, X’Aviya Cook 0 0-1 0, Isaiah Serf 0 0-0 0, Shemar Taylor 0 0-0 0, Kanon Higgs 0 0-0 0. Totals: 10 8-13 32.
Mt. Vernon (15-8): Eli Bridenthal 4 1-2 11, Tanner Teschendorf 0 0-0 0, R’mani Wells 2 2-2 7, Julien Smith 2 2-3 7, Luke Ertel 4 6-6 16, Adam Hackett 3 4-4 13, Conner Schank 2 0-0 4, Brady Fitzgerald 0 0-0 0, Daylon King 0 2-2 2, Dillon Wright 1 0-0 2, Elijah Parra 0 0-0 0, Aden Daugherty 0 0-0 0. Totals: 18 17-19 62.
3-point goals: Muncie Central 4 (Ullom 2, Harris, McNabb); Mt. Vernon 9 (Hackett 3, Ertel 2, Bridenthal 2, Wells, Smith)
