By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
There was a time earlier this season when Thomas More Coach Justin Ray didn’t think his Saints “could score enough to win” the big games.
During a four-game TMU losing skid a month ago, he was right. But “now that we’ve won five of six or is it six of seven?” Ray said – It’s six of seven – “we’ve got the ability to do that.”
As in scoring 88 points in a six-point win over a Cedarville team that can shoot it well past the three-point line and did just that in a Great Midwest Athletic Conference home game Thursday the Saints had to win – and did – 88-82 thanks to a 50-point second half.
Had to win if they wanted to stay in the running for one of the four postseason playoff hosting spots next month in the GMAC
.
Had to win if they hoped to improve their season record to 16-8 (11-6 in the GMAC). Record-wise, the Saints are a half-game ahead of a Hillsdale team they play on the road next week. In terms of the points rating system the league uses to determine seeding, they might still be slightly behind Hillsdale.
And had to win if they wanted to end their all-time 0-3 winless mark against the Yellow Jackets.”
“It feels good,” senior guard Casey George said after his game-high 28 points that included knocking down eight of 10 free throws in the last 90 seconds as Cedarville was forced to foul.
“He made plays, I made plays,” said George’s senior guard mate, Wyatt Vieth, whose three straight threes to open the second half flipped a 42-38 halftime deficit to a 49-46 lead that the scrappy Saints kept building on in a 17-6 run the first six minutes after intermission.
The Thomas More duo wasn’t alone on the perimeter as strong 6-foot-3 redshirt freshman Kai Simpson, like the two seniors, showed the ability to drive the ball and score through contact as well as hit the three, on his way to 26 points.
“Kai was huge down the stretch,” Ray said of the Lexington Frederick Douglass alum. “He doesn’t look like a freshman.” Or play like one.
Combine the three perimeter players who can score inside or out – with Vieth’s 13 points – and that’s 67 points. Add in their 18 rebounds and four assists and that’s a ton of work being done out on the floor by that trio.
But that’s not the end of it. Mitchell Rylee, the 6-8 junior forward out of Covington Catholic and a transfer from Miami of Ohio after a freshman year there, was tireless against a Cedarville front line of 6-10, 6-8 and 6-7 players with his 16 points and a game-high 10 rebounds.
If there was one place TMU had an obvious edge on Cedarville, it was on the boards where the Saints finished with a 36-17 edge including a 12-2 advantage in offensive rebounds. One caveat here: Hitting 27 of 52 (51.9 percent) from the field after a first half when the Yellow Jackets made 50 percent (seven of 14) of their threes and also made eight of 10 from inside the three-point arc, Cedarville didn’t have many offensive rebound opportunities. They weren’t missing.
Not that the Saints were going to allow many of those. Or let Cedarville’s hot hand take the wind out of their sails. Or keep them from playing through contact.
“We’re used to it,” George said of a game that was physical from start to finish, through 10 lead changes and 12 ties.
And yes, after getting outscored 9-5 the final three minutes of the first half to fall behind by four, “I did get on their rear ends,” Ray said. “But we didn’t change a (darn) thing (the second half). That was unacceptable.
What followed halftime was not.
“We got stops when we needed to,” George said after they’d allowed Cedarville’s Tim Davis, a Cologne, Germany, native, to score 18 points before intermission. That he didn’t score a point the second half is an indicator of how the Saints tightened things down a bit. Anthony Ruffolo, a sophomore from Dayon Alter, led the Yellow Jackets with 21 points.
But it wasn’t enough as the Saints built up an 11-point lead, 61-50, with 11:24 to go in the second half and never let Cedarville get closer than two – 65-63 – from then on, lengthening it to 10, 80-70, with 1:32 to go.
“If we don’t do that, if we’re not a hell of a lot tougher, we’re not beating teams like that,” Ray said. Not on this night when Cedarville was shooting like that. Just the way TMU did against talented teams like Georgetown the Saints went head-to-head with in their NAIA Mid-South Conference days three years ago.
SCORING SUMMARY
CEDARVILLE 42 40—82
THOMAS MORE 38 50—88
CEDARVILLE (10-12, 5-10 GMAC): Johnson 2-7 0-3 6-8 10, Pszczola 3-5 1-3 0-0 7, J. Davis 4-11 3-8 4-4 15, T. Davis 7-9 4-5 0-0 18, Sellars 2-3 1-2 0-0 5, Okpara 1-1 0-0 0-0 2, Ruffolo 7-13 3-8 4-4 21, Thomas 0-2 0-1 2-2 2, Willeman 1-1 0-0 0-0 2; TOTALS: 27-52 12-30 16-18—82.
THOMAS MORE (16-8, 11-6 GMAC); Browne 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Rylee 7-12 0-0 2-4 16, Simpson 9-16 3-5 5-7 26, Vieth 3-10 3-10 4-4 13, George 9-15 0-0 10-13 28, Johnson 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Paris 1-1 1-1 0-0 3, Pouncy 1-2 0-0 0-0 2, Crowe 0-1 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 30-58 7-17 21-28—88.