NORWALK – It seems the Ashland boys basketball team had grown tired of losing close calls to Norwalk in season openers.
After a pair of losses by one bucket to the Truckers in each of the last two years, the Arrows kicked off their 117th season of basketball Friday night with a 50-47 comeback triumph at Norwalk.
Ashland trailed the Truckers 32-24 at halftime but turned up its defense in the second half and scooted ahead 49-47 on a layup from junior Nathan Bernhard with 1:34 to play.
Junior Reed Emmons added a free throw with 39 seconds remaining and the Arrows held off Norwalk (1-1).
“The whole second half, we really turned things around defensively and found a way to make enough shots to win,” said Ashland head coach Jason Hess, now 101-107 in his 10th year leading his alma mater.
“It was more a matter of just executing the gameplan and being tough enough to have a physical presence (in the second half) and contest those layups as opposed to just shying away.”
All 14 of the Truckers’ first-half field goals came from 2-point range as they built their eight-point halftime lead. Ashland answered by not allowing a single field goal from inside the 3-point line in the final two quarters.
Norwalk senior post Ben Rothhaar – a 6-foot-5, 225-pound Rutgers football commit at tight end – was held scoreless after a 14-point first half.
Truckers senior forward Brock Kuhl netted a game-high 19 points, but his trio of 3-pointers in the fourth quarter represented three of just four field goals made in the entire second half by the hosts.
Ashland outscored Norwalk 26-15 after halftime.
“I thought tonight, overall, we were tougher than we were a year ago,” said Hess, whose team started last season just 1-5 before finishing at 10-13. “We were able to get the ball inside to Nathan Bernhard and he was able to make some plays, draw double-teams and find shooters.
“I thought it really showed the maturity of our guys from the last couple years, instead of just settling for perimeter shots, we were able to work inside-out.”
It certainly was different from last year’s 39-37 season-opening home loss to Norwalk, when Ashland was held scoreless in the final 2:48.
On Friday, Emmons led the winners with 15 points – 12 after halftime. Hess said he didn’t think Emmons was a game-high scorer for the team at all last season.
“A year ago when he struggled shooting the ball early, he would have kind of quit shooting,” Hess said. “Tonight he maintained the same confidence and kept finding a way to get open shots.”
Ashland’s other critical scorers were two of the guys who led the AHS football team to its historic 12-1 season, which ended in the regional semifinals just three weeks ago Friday.
Bernhard, the Ohio Cardinal Conference Offensive Player of the Year at quarterback, started his hoops season with a double-double of 11 points and 10 rebounds.
Senior guard Tyler Sauder, the OCC Defensive Player of the Year as a defensive back, dropped in seven of his 10 points in the fourth quarter Friday night, including a key 3-pointer late.
“The nice thing coming out of football with the success that they had, these guys are expecting to win on Friday nights,” Hess said. “They bring that confidence, they bring that attitude, they bring that swagger.
“Even when we were trailing, they weren’t hanging their heads, they were finding a way to compete and claw and scratch and make a play that’s going to propel us to win the game.”
Junior guard Paxon Ediger, who was last season’s top Arrows scorer (12.3 points per game), finished with seven points while taking over a good bit of the point-guard duties with junior Gabe Baith (five points) getting into early foul trouble.
The coach said his squad still needs to work off some rust and its lack of basketball conditioning, but he liked a lot of the things he saw to begin the season.
Hess, now the second-longest tenured head coach in program history behind only Jim Barr (11 seasons from 1972-1983), said it was a good way to get things rolling.
“It’s fun to play in those games early to learn how to win,” he said. “Last year we struggled to win those close games early and hopefully this will be a sign of things to come.”
The Arrows have their first home tipoff of the season at Arrow Arena on Saturday night with Clyde (1-0) – another Sandusky Bay Conference squad – in town. Hess said his team should be prepared to handle much more on-the-ball pressure than it saw Friday night.
It’s one of just three scheduled home games in December for Ashland (the others are Mansfield Senior on Dec. 17 and New Philadelphia on Dec. 27).
