Temple's defense paves way to win

LIMA — Very often, playing good defense will help jumpstart the offense.

Such was the case in Temple Christian’s 47-28 Northwest Central Conference boys basketball victory over visiting Waynesfield-Goshen on Friday.

Three players scored in double figures for Temple Christian (12-6, 5-2 NWCC). Jared Mitchell, a 6-foot-4 post player, scored 12 points and had four rebounds. Justin Kroehler scored 10 points, including two 3-pointers. Kent Brenneman had an all-around solid floor game for the Pioneers. Brenneman scored 10 points, had eight assists, five rebounds and three steals.

Lee Turner led Waynesfield-Goshen (6-13, 2-5) with eight points and six rebounds.

Temple Christian shot a dismal 31 percent from the field in the first half, but still managed to come away with a 22-16 halftime lead.

In the third quarter, however, Temple Christian’s halfcourt trap helped jumpstart the offense as the Pioneers opened the third quarter with an 11-0 run and never looked back. Kroehler hit two 3-pointers, while Mitchell scored four points down low to help extend Temple’s lead to 36-20 by the end of the third quarter.

Brenneman said his coach (Bruce Bowman) told the team at halftime to keep running the offense and to be patient.

“We just couldn’t make our shots (in the first half),” Brenneman said. “Coach told us to run our motion more. In the second half, we did a better job of doing that.

“Coach also told us to dig down on defense and let the offense come to us.”

Bowman said Brenneman can contribute in many different ways.

“I call him (Brenneman) our ‘stat stuffer,’” Bowman said. “He can obviously score, he can rebound, he makes the assist. And defensively, he gets a hand on a lot of balls and really disrupts the other team’s offense.”

The first quarter, Waynesfield-Goshen struggled at the offensive end. The Tigers did not record its first field goal until five minutes into the quarter. Both teams struggled at the offensive end. Temple made 4 of 15 from the field, while Waynesfield-Goshen connected on just 3 of 12 from the floor, as the Pioneers slipped out with a 9-7 lead.

In the second quarter, Temple’s lead was cut to one point on four occasions. However, in the second half, the Pioneers finally got the separation it needed.

Waynesfield-Goshen coach Ryan Taylor said once Temple Christian got it going in the second half, his team had a hard time regrouping.

“Sometimes when you struggle, like we did in the third quarter, then it can start to snowball,” Taylor said. “But, the guys played hard.

“They (Temple Christian) are pretty good. Their guards are long and when they can break you down, they’re tough to defend.”

For the game, Temple shot 40 percent from the field, while Waynesfield-Goshen ended the game shooting 25 percent.

Bowman said the last two regular season games are very important for his squad.

“It’s always good to end (conference season) with a win,” Bowman said. “I really think the next two games are very important for us. The tournament is a very possession-type of game. We want to work on getting better. We really want to be playing good basketball by our first (tournament) game.”