Local Sports

Rivalry win: Fort Frye boys grab victory over Waterford

BEVERLY -- Six games into the 2020-2021 basketball campaign, the Fort Frye Cadets have yet to play the kind of basketball they feel they are capable of playing.

That fact should be plain scary for their competition after the Cadets rolled to a 64-33 win Friday night over the visiting Waterford Wildcats to improve to 5-1 on the season.

Senior guard Nic Hart poured in a game-high 23 points as the Cadets pulled out to a double-digit lead in the first quarter and never looked back as they tallied their third victory in eight days.

"It's always good to get a win in a rivalry game and our guys did a good job taking care of business," said Fort Frye head coach Eric Henniger. "We are still working with our chemistry but we are in the same boat as any team in the country because you don't have the same team every practice."

The Cadets jumped out to a 17-4 lead after one quarter of play before sputtering a little bit in the second quarter as Waterford managed to keep the lead at 13 at the intermission.

Fort Frye came out clicking to start the second half by scoring the first 11 points to open up a 24-point lead and spoil any hopes their rivals had of pulling off a second half upset.

"We tried to fix some things at halftime and they were without one of their best players in Holden Dailey so we had to take advantage of that," said Henniger. "It's unfortunate and you hate to but that's just a part of the game and we did what we had to do."

Owen Brown got the first bucket of the third quarter for the Cadets before Luke Huffman's field goal pushed the lead to 33-16.

Brown and senior Kelton Fogle each scored two-pointers before Huffman drilled a triple to push the Cadet lead to 40-16.

The Wildcats got a pair of three-pointers later in the third period by seniors Jude Huffman and Luke Teters but Hart scored eight points of his own in the final three minutes of the quarter as the Cadets carried a 48-24 lead into the final quarter.

Fort Frye was able to start the final quarter the same way they started the third as they opened up a 31-point lead by scoring the first seven points allowing Henniger the opportunity to get plenty of quality minutes for his entire roster.

In addition to his 23 points, Hart yanked down five rebounds, dished out four assists while also coming up with four steals.

"Nic's a stat-filler who works very hard on both offense and defense," said Henniger of his senior guard. "I thought our supporting cast did a really good job as well coming off the bench and allowing us to save our legs a little bit."

Much like his coach, Hart feels his team will continue to improve with their best basketball yet to come.

"If we are all clicking I think we are a very tough team to deal with," said Hart. "We have got so many different scorers, good rebounders. We've got all the pieces we just need to put them all to use."

Huffman finished the game with 13 points while Fogle reached double-figures with 10 points while matching Harts totals in steals, rebounds and assists.

Fort Frye shot nearly 58 percent from the floor (26-45) while out-rebounding the visitors by a healthy 26-12 margin.

Waterford was led in scoring by Luke Teters and Ruslan Strahler with six points apiece while Jude Huffman added five.

The loss was the first one of the season for the Wildcats who slipped to 2-1 with a home game against Trimble next on the agenda Tuesday evening.

The win wrapped up a tough stretch of four games in eight days against quality opponents in Shenandoah, Fairland Warren and the Wildcats for the Cadets with the only blemish coming Tuesday night against the Warriors.

"We tried to get everyone involved tonight and play good defense and get out and get running and we did…. it's big to get a rivalry win," said Hart. "We definitely wanted to get all four of them but 3-1 is pretty good and I think we will get on a little roll now."

The Cadets will travel to New Philadelphia on Tuesday.