Story by: Scott Dubois—
In an early season clash on two long time rivals, Oak Hill captured a hard fought victory over visiting Manchester 72-57 in boys’ basketball action Saturday night at Wabash.
In their home opener the Golden jumped to early 15-8 fueled by some easy buckets inside led junior center Caleb Middlesworth. The Squires responded by outscoring Oak Hill 5-3 to close within five points at 18-13 to end the first quarter. In the second period, Middlesworth headed to bench with foul trouble, but Manchester could not take advantage as Oak Hill continued to dominate inside in route to a 33-23 halftime lead.
In the second half the Squires used a two three zone to slow down the high powered offense of the 4th ranked team in 2A. This strategy seemed to work as Oak Hill tallied only 13 points in the third quarter. However Manchester could only manage 10 points as the Eagles expanded their advantage to 13 at 46-33 at the end of the third quarter. In the final period, Manchester made a comeback charge behind the hot third point shooting of junior Koehl Fluke to cut the deficit to single digits. At this point Oak Hill junior Spencer Ballinger exploded on a 10 point run of his own to power the Eagles to the 73-57 triumph. Oak Hill experienced balanced scoring in the game led by 21 for Middlesworth, followed by Ballinger with 20 and juniors Tyce Frank and David Arens with 14 and 13 respectively. Middlesworth grabbed six boards as the rebound leader while Frank and Ballinger dished out four assists each. Fluke led Manchester with 26 points.
Oak Hill is now 2-0 on the season and will host Taylor on Saturday. Manchester falls to 0-2 and will host Wawasee in their next contest.
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