Bonus Basketball Sunday

MARIA STEIN - The New Bremen boys basketball team dominated the fourth quarter to force overtime, but Marion Local responded in a big way.

New Bremen overcame an 11-point second-half deficit, but once the game went into overtime, everything came up Flyers. Tate Hess put Marion up 12 seconds into the extra period and the Flyers never let up on the way to a 64-59 Midwest Athletic Conference win at the Hangar on Sunday night, after the game was postponed from Friday due to the snowstorm.

With the win, Marion (13-4, 5-1 MAC) jumps into a tie for the MAC lead with New Bremen (14-4, 6-1 MAC) and Versailles.

"We said last week after New Bremen knocked off Versailles, with how we've played thus far this year, that we earned an opportunity to play in a huge game like this," Marion coach Kurt Goettemoeller said. "Then it didn't happen on Friday, but credit our fans and New Bremen's fans for showing up on a Sunday night. It was just a tremendous atmosphere."

Two years after the Flyers knocked the Cardinals out in the district semifinals by holding the ball for the entirety of the second overtime, they took the opposite strategy and sent Hess driving along the baseline on the first possession. He missed the shot but drew a foul and hit one of the two free throws to put Marion up 49-48.

After David Homan missed a long jumper on the other end, Hess took a pass from Jack Knapke out of the paint and hit a trey to put Marion up by four 40 seconds into overtime. Aaron Thieman answered with a three and Hess missed two free throws with a chance to extend the lead, but then grabbed the rebound and found backup point guard Luke Pohlman, who drained a three to put Marion up 55-51 with 2:10 remaining.

"I warned him before the game tonight, we have to press some buttons here," Goettemoeller said of Pohlman, a junior who's mainly gotten minutes on the JV team. "We need a little juice, and he can give us some juice on offense."

Homan hit a free throw to cut the lead to three and Nick Alig grabbed the rebound off the miss, and five seconds later Trevor Bergman hit two more from the charity stripe to make it 55-54 with 1:45 left. On the other end, Knapke lost the ball but managed to snatch it off the floor and sink a short jumper to extend the lead.

Homan went back to the line and hit the first free throw but missed the second. Jadyn Mescher missed a three on the other end, and Peyton Otte and Knapke grabbed offensive rebounds before Otte put it in on the fourth try for a 59-55 lead.

"We know we're going to get everyone's best shot every night," New Bremen coach Cory Stephens said. "Against a team in Marion Local that's very well coached, and playing here in a tough environment to play, you're going to have to grind it out even when there's no time on the clock."

Reece Busse drew a foul on Hess and hit two free throws with 38.6 seconds left, Otte answered with two on the other end, then hit another to stretch the lead to five with 12.7 seconds left. As the Cardinals went to inbound the ball, Hess made a sliding steal and Goettemoeller called timeout to save the possession.

But the Flyers' inbounds pass was too long for Knapke and sailed out of bounds, as as Bergman drove up the court, he drew a foul on Hess, sending him to the bench with 5.6 seconds left as the crowd gave him a loud standing ovation.

Bergman hit both free throws to cut the lead to three, giving the Cardinals a sliver of hope, but Homan was called for a foul and Mescher sank two free throws with 4.2 seconds left to ice the game.

After Homan and Alig ran into foul trouble early on, the Flyers were firmly in control and turned a four-point halftime lead into an 11-point lead with 2:33 left in the third. But the Cardinals roared back, starting with a trey from Bergman at the top of the key before Alig drained an open three from the left corner to cut the lead to five heading into the fourth.

On the first possession of the fourth, Bergman got the ball at the arc again, took one step to his left to avoid a leaping Flyers defender, and drained another three to make it 33-31 with 7:39 left in regulation.

"Cory went small, and I definitely had that in the back of my mind that they could play that way," Goettemoeller said. "They made Reece Busse their 5-man, so that means Jack had to guard away from the basket … at some point, it just became, 'All right, Jack, you've got to figure it out. You've got to guard him and stay in front of him as best as you can.'

"Credit Cory, that was a good strategy that they had and that got them back in the game."

After Busse hit a trey with 5:25 left, Alig stole the ball and missed a tying layup, and as Thieman and Ronnebaum fought for the rebound, the refs called a double technical, earning Ronnebaum his fifth foul with 5:06 left in the fourth.

A minute later, Thieman drove the lane and hit a layup to tie the game at 38. Otte answered with a short jumper in front of the basket, and the Cardinals tied it up again at 42 on a free throw by Homan. Hess drew a foul on Bergman and hit two free throws to put Marion back on top, Busse answered on the other end, and Otte converted a hoop-and-harm to make it 47-44.

Bergman hit two free throws to cut it to one, and Alig gave the Cardinals their first and only lead of the second half with 1:14 left in regulation, leaping in front of Mescher to steal an inbounds pass and tossing the ball behind his back in midair before driving for a breakaway layup.

"We were down five going into the fourth, so it was just about getting stops," Stephens said. "And then I thought we shot the ball well from the line in the fourth quarter and overtime, for the most part."

Otte hit a free throw 22 seconds later, and neither team could score in the final 52 seconds of the fourth.

Hess finished with 19 points and Knapke added 13 points and 13 rebounds, while Thieman finished with 17 points for the Cardinals.

Marion returns to the Hangar on Tuesday to play St. Henry in a MAC game rescheduled due to the football team's state title run. The Flyers lost to the Redskins on a Bennett Gels trey with 30 seconds left in the championship game of the Asset Allocation Associates Holiday Classic on Dec. 30.

"After the game, the first thing I told them is, 'All you did is make Tuesday's game bigger,' " Goettemoeller said. " 'All you did is make that game huge. This is great, but if you don't come out ready to play on Tuesday, it's not going to matter for the league.' "

New Bremen has a chance to get back in the win column on Friday when it hosts New Knoxville.