COLUMBIA - Marquette Catholic six-foot-six forward Nick Hemann’s main contributions this season had been rebounding and playing good defense.
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Thursday night, things were different as he scored 13 points, albeit all in the first half. They helped propel the Explorers to a 31-13 halftime lead and ultimately a 51-36 victory over the Triad Knights in the Columbia-Freeburg Tournament on Thursday night.
“It feels pretty good. It helps boost up the confidence for my teammates too because as the season goes by they begin to feed me the ball more,” Hemann said. This is my first year starting, and now everybody's starting to get a feel for each other.”
“I thought we executed pretty well, came out with a lot of energy defensively and did what we had to do to win. When he gets on the glass like that, and you get this team second and third chance opportunities it’s going to be a long night for the other team.”
Isaiah Ervin also tallied 13 points, while Jake Hall added 11.
“[Nick’s] a great athlete and a great kid. He’s a real X-factor for our team. A lot of people don’t put him [in] the spotlight because he’s not a kid that scores a lot of points for us. Sammy [Green] made a lot of nice passes to him. I thought the difference was Hemann’s activity on the glass as well. He’s the type of kid that’s just an animal on the boards, and that was a big difference in the game.”
Triad scored the first five points of the game, but the Explorers went on a 12-2 run to end the quarter.
The Explorers offense picked up as the guards found Hemann open down low quite a bit and senior executed on his part by converting the layups and getting fouled at times too. That included a steal that led to a dunk, which wowed the Marquette crowd. Defensively, Marquette allowed seven points for roughly 13 minutes after the five they gave up in the opening minutes of the game.
“It’s a real momentum shifter for us because everything gets our team going,” Hemann said. “The more momentum we get, the more dangerous we get, and the more people get going.”
Green capped the first half for the Explorers on a fantastic step-back three-pointer that beat the buzzer to give his team a 31-13 lead.
“The second quarter was big. This team has the ability to make runs, and it was huge. Our press created turnovers, and we thrive off of turnovers. If you get a couple more baskets then you a little bit more mojo flowing and I thought our defensive intensity led to easy baskets for us.”
An 18-point lead at halftime for Marquette has felt like game over for the opposition, but the Knights not only refused to quit but stepped their game up a notch.
They didn’t let the Explorers push the lead over 20 points and with 7:20 to go in the game they managed to get the deficit down to 13 at 45-32. Medford gave plenty of credit to Triad, but also took some blame for the Explorers slowing down the tempo in the fourth quarter.
“Part of that was probably on me. I kinda put the breaks on a little bit, and I take the blame for that second half,” Medford said. “Triad’s not bad. It’s hard in high school basketball when you got two well-coached teams, and you got some kids on each team to beat a team by 35 points. To get that kind of lead and sustain that lead says a lot about our kids.”
After picking up two quick fouls and sitting out the remainder of the first half, Ervin scored ten points in the second half, including two straight three-pointers.
“[Medford] sat me out the rest of the first and second quarters, but I cheered my team on,” Ervin said. “It felt really good. I had to do something today. I hit a couple of three’s and played some good defense.”
With under four minutes to play, Irving made two free throws, and the Explorers got two straight steals and two layups by Chris Hartrich to give them a 19-point lead, which essentially put the game out of reach.
Marquette remains undefeated at 12-0 and will play the Lebanon Greyhounds tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 p.m. The Explorers defeated Lebanon 68-26 in their first game of the season in the Metro-East Lutheran Turkey Tip-Off Classic.
“Coach Medford tells us that everybody is going to give us their best punch to try to beat us, and we just kept playing hard and got the dub,” Ervin said.
