WIAA Division 5 playoffs: Catholic Central 71, Faith Christian 47
Hocking’s season high, Rueber’s 8 assists spark Toppers
By Mike Ramczyk
For the first 18 minutes of Tuesday’s WIAA Division 5 boys basketball game between host Catholic Central and Faith Christian, the Topper faithful couldn’t help but sense trouble.
The Eagles, a team that Catholic Central routed in the regular season, erased a 20-8 deficit with hot shooting, a smothering full-court press, trapping defense and tons of energy.
After a Faith bucket opened the second half, No. 8 Catholic Central clung to a 32-30 lead over the No. 9 seed.
But that’s when the Toppers kicked their game into high gear with aggressive defense and up-tempo offense, and suddenly a 15-0 run turned into a 71-47 drubbing.
Catholic Central improved to 16-7 and will travel Friday to No. 1 Hilbert (21-1), the sixth-ranked team in the state in Division 5.
“We were getting beat backdoor in the first half, and we had to switch up our defense,” said head coach Kyle Scott. “They came out smoking. We were working through some kinks.”
“We essentially stopped calling sets and just started playing basketball. It worked out and we got some layups.”
Catholic Central senior point guard Aaron Rueber orchestrated the second-half surge, dishing out eight assists for the game and putting the Toppers in position for easy layups.
As soon as the Toppers corralled a defensive rebound, it was off to the races for Rueber to find junior Frank Koehnke, who led the way with 20 points, and Bryce Hocking, who scored a season-high 16 points and brought high energy on both sides of the floor.
Hocking overcame a torn meniscus and a sprained ankle earlier in the season.
“We had a lot more energy in the second half and schemed out how to break their press,” Hocking said.
“We started playing our Topper defense in the second half, and it got us the win,” said Koehnke, who leads the Toppers with 17.3 points per game.
Eagles soar early
Faith Christian ended the first half with a 19-12 run to cut the lead to 32-27 thanks to an Amos Jackson 3-pointer.
After a three-point play cut it to 32-30 early in the second half, the Toppers defense held the Eagles scoreless for six minutes for a 15-0 run, highlighted by a series of layups for Koehnke, Cole Pankau and Hocking.
Rueber, who added four steals, turned each Faith missed shot or turnover into a fast break. The floor general pushed the ball up court and heaved a full-court pass to Hocking, who was all alone for a layup to open the lead up to 59-39 with six minutes left.
Later, Sam McKinney found a cutting Pankau with a bounce pass for two, Hocking cleaned up a Rueber missed layup for a bucket and Pankau added a swooping layup for a 28-point lead.
With two minutes left, the Topper bench was cleared.
“Aaron Rueber is an unsung hero,” Scott said. “He never has big stats, and he never runs out of energy.”
“Bryce plays extremely hard. When he’s on, he brings a spark.”
Pankau added 11 points, and Chad Zirbel pitched in eight points.
Catholic Central shot a scorching 55 percent from the floor and dished out 25 assists.
“We’re going to find out what we’re made of against Hilbert,” Scott said. “I don’t know how good or bad we are because our conference is rough.”
The Toppers will take a two-game win streak into the game against Hilbert.
“If we play like we did in the second half, we’re going to be hard to beat,” Hocking added.
Koehnke said the momentum needs to carry over to Friday.
“We’ve talked about hitting that slope,” he said. “I think we’ve hit that slope, and we’ve got to keep going up.”
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