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Wildcats cruise: Waterford boys way too much for Manchester

Photo by Jay W. Bennett Waterford’s Luke Teters, who had 23 points, drives against Manchester’s Isaiah Scott during the Wildcats’ Division IV sectional opener Wednesday night inside Harry Cooper Annex. The Wildcats won, 74-54.

WATERFORD — One-win Manchester made Wednesday’s Division IV sectional opener a game into the fourth quarter, but the 20th-seeded Greyhounds couldn’t overcome the one-two punch of Waterford’s Jarrett Armstrong and Luke Teters as the 13th-seeded Wildcats pulled away for a 74-54 win inside Harry Cooper Annex.

The 8-11 Wildcats of head coach Tom Simms, who play tonight at South Gallia before going to No. 4 seed Lucasville Valley on Saturday evening for the sectional title, received a combined 50 points from Teters and Armstrong. The freshman Armstrong drained six 3s en route to a career-high 27 counters.

Manchester opened the game by hitting its first three 3s and led 11-2 early thanks to bombs from Daulton McDonald, Isaiah Scott (team-high 17 points) and Kyle Reaves (11 points) along with a deuce by Brayden Young via a Ryland Wikoff dime.

The hosts trailed 25-20 late in the first after Aaron Lucas converted a pair of charity stripe tosses, but Armstrong’s bucket cut it to three entering the second. The Greyhounds, who shot 52% (13 of 25) in the first half along with making 6 of 12 from deep, led 35-34 at the break, but finished the game at 38.9% (21 of 54) while making 2 of 5 from 3-point land after intermission.

“It wasn’t easy. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” admitted coach Simms, who also got a 16-point, 12-rebound double-double from Holden Dailey along with a game-high six assists from Grant McCutcheon. “They are hungry and they wanted to win. We got two films from them and there wasn’t any shooting like that in the films. We knew 33 (Scott) was a player and two (McDonald) could do some things, but not all those guys knocking down 3s.

“They were hungry and they wanted to win and we just kind of got rattled. We fought ourselves out of the hole in the second, going in down one and then got the stops and got things happening.”

Reaves’ corner 3 with 1:52 left in the third gave the Greyhounds (1-17) their final lead at 46-43.

Armstrong’s 3 with 41 seconds to go tied it for the final time and then Jacob Huffman found Armstrong open for another bomb to give the hosts a 49-46 edge entering the fourth.

Teters opened the final stanza with a 3. Armstrong followed with a 14-foot baseline make and after Teters hit from deep, Armstrong made a three-point play for a 60-46 bulge at the 6:27 mark. The 17-0 run took place in a span of 2:14.

“We’re a whole team. All come together, get the job done, play defense, come down, run our offense and get some shots,” Armstrong said. “We got a few stops and came back and hit a couple 3s and Luke over there helped me out. Open shots, shooters shoot and we got it done.”

Young, who had a team-high eight boards and also joined Wikoff in scoring eight points, made a field goal and Scott followed with a hoop to make it 60-50 with 5:05 remaining, but the Greyhounds never got any closer.

“This really meant a lot to me, actually, as a senior,” Teters said. “This is my last home game so I just wanted to show out and me and my partner over there he showed out as well and went for 50 combined points. I just wanted to go out, have a fun time and that’s what we did.

“They started out hitting everything. There was nothing they didn’t miss pretty much and we started out with a huge slump and everybody was down. Then we started picking it up and hitting our shots and at half we just stressed defense.”

Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com

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