JEROMESVILLE – There were plenty of No. 1s the Hillsdale boys basketball team would have rather avoided Friday inside Steve Dickerson Gymnasium.
The first home loss and the first back-to-back losses of the season weren’t what the Falcons had in mind entering the night.
But it was the Waynedale kid wearing No. 1 on his jersey – guard Matty Raber – who might have Hillsdale seeing the number in its nightmares.
The 5-foot-11 junior dropped a career-high 28 points behind a career-high eight 3-pointers to force the Golden Bears past the Falcons, 69-57.
Raber hit at least one triple in every quarter, burying three each in key first- and fourth-quarter stretches that proved to be the difference.
Asked if there was a critical dagger of a 3-pointer to come off the junior’s left hand, Hillsdale coach Ben Ferguson just laughed and said, “Yeah, all eight of them.”
“We didn’t lose tonight because of effort,” Ferguson said. “It wasn’t because we weren’t locked in, it wasn’t because we gave up on our defensive principles. We had somebody come in here that was red-hot and he hit contested shots.”
Hillsdale (5-2, 2-2 Wayne County Athletic League) got as close as nine points in the final 7 minutes of the game, but that’s when Raber triggered his final trey from the top of the perimeter with a hand in his face to make it 63-51 with 4:10 left.
He was 8-of-14 from downtown, the main reason the Golden Bears (5-4, 3-2) outscored the Falcons 30-6 from long distance.
“When we’re making shots we’re a pretty tough team to guard because we’ve got five guys who can do a little bit of everything,” said third-year Waynedale head coach Dane Held, a former standout and coach at New London.
“Matty was hitting his shots tonight, but I think it started with our defense. The last couple games that we had lost, we felt like our defense was really where we were losing games, so it’s been a major emphasis the past week.”
Hillsdale had an impressive counter-puncher in senior Braylen Jarvis, who finished one point off his season-high with 27 markers. Jarvis tried to drag the Falcons back into the mix, tallying eight points during a 4-minute stretch of the fourth quarter, but the hosts couldn’t get the complementary scoring they needed to climb over the top.
Behind Jarvis, sophomore Troy Bennett dropped in 15 points for the Falcons, but they got just 15 points from the rest of the roster combined – and none came from the bench.
“Jarvis played the whole game and the guy was incredibly tired,” said Ferguson of his senior, who is averaging 19.7 points per game. “He’s our leader for sure with energy and effort … and he’s without a doubt just as tough on defense as he is on offense.”
The game was tied twice in the first quarter, but the Golden Bears entered the second quarter on a 13-2 run – including a near buzzer-beating 3-pointer from Raber.
Waynedale also scored the last six points of the first half to lead 31-25, and didn’t trail for the final 26 minutes of the contest despite being outrebounded, 25-15.
The visitors got an additional 15 points from Jeremy Reber and 11 from Mark Yoder, which helped them shoot nearly 60 percent from the field as a team (29 of 49) while committing only six turnovers.
It was a bit of a reawakening for a WHS team that had lost three in a row entering the night.
Despite having nine league games still remaining, Held said his team badly needed a victory.
“We have two losses in the league already,” he said, “and if we want to give ourselves a chance to compete with the top of the league, we can’t drop too many more.”
Hillsdale starters Jack Fickes (4 points, 7 rebounds, 3 steals) and Bradey Krichbaum (8 points, 7 rebounds) also scrapped inside the paint and had some key moments, and Ferguson feels his team could take plenty away from the loss.
The Falcons are still on track to run down their first winning record since the 2015-16 season, and the program as a whole is thriving. The junior varsity is 6-1 and the seventh-grade (7-0) and eighth-grade (7-0) teams have yet to lose.
Ferguson likes the majority of what he has seen in his first year running the show and added that he felt the league runner-up could have three or four league losses. Everyone is looking up at Norwayne (9-0, 5-0) at this point.
“There are games we’ve won this year that I wasn’t as proud of the boys as I was overall tonight,” Ferguson said.
“I’ve been around the Wayne County League since 1991 and I’ve never seen this much parity,” he added. “Norwayne’s a great team and everyone else will battle.”
Hillsdale heads back out onto the road Tuesday at Smithville (4-5, 2-2). Waynedale plays at Garaway the same night.
