Indians beat Trojans, improve to 2-0

FORT RECOVERY - For a team that had a grand total of four practices before getting the season underway, Fort Recovery has looked good.

The Indians took the lead from the start and never looked back in improving to 2-0 with a 54-44 win over Arcanum on Tuesday night at Fort Site Fieldhouse. The Trojans drop to 1-3 with the loss.

With most of the basketball team playing key roles in the school's state championship football team, the Indians had just over a week of work before opening last Saturday at Shawnee.

Even with the squad committing 18 turnovers and hitting just 50 percent of its free throws, the Indians never trailed and were never fewer than three points ahead of the Trojans all evening.

"That's the style of kids here at Fort Recovery. It's kids that play hard no matter if it's football, basketball or baseball," Fort Recovery coach Chris Guggenbiller said. "There's a group of kids here that come out and play hard. It may not be pretty and not always the most fundamentally sound right now, but they play hard. That's what got us through tonight."

Three-pointers from Chase Bruns and Micaiah Cox put Fort Recovery up 9-0 halfway through the first quarter with Arcanum not scoring until a Cole Burrell bucket with just under 3 1/2 minutes left to play in the quarter.

The rest of the game played along the same scenario: Arcanum drew within five to eight points and Fort Recovery scored to bump back its lead into double digits. The biggest lead came midway through the second quarter at 22-11. After that, the game hovered in the 5-10-point range.

Arcanum stayed close thanks to the hot shooting of freshman Wade Meeks. The guard was 5-of-11 from the three-point line to finish with a game-high 21 points. Take away his 7-of-18 shooting and the Trojans were 9-of-31 from the field (29 percent).

Fort Recovery got a solid shooting game from Chase Bruns, who was 6-of-12 from the field and 3-of-5 from the three-point line to finish with 15 points.

"Chase is going to have to shoot the ball well for us in order for us to be very successful this year," Guggenbiller said. "He's a streaky shooter. If he can get a couple shots off from open looks, more than likely he's going to hit them."

Cox added 14 points and seven boards for the Indians. Darien Sheffer finished with six points and 10 rebounds as the Indians outrebounded the Trojans 40-18, including a blistering 16-4 advantage on the offensive glass.

"Last thing I said leaving the locker room (was) 'It's rebounding that we need to continue to dominate teams,' " Guggenbiller said. "We dominated Arcanum on the glass."

Fort Recovery opens MAC play on Friday at New Bremen before returning home Saturday to face border rival Jay County.