Claire Andrews was named Courtwarming Queen and Andrew Mullock was named Courtwarming King at ceremonies Friday night and the Worth County boys avoided becoming the first Tiger basketball team since 1970-1971 to go winless as they beat Polo 79-51. The other queen candidate was Kristen Andrews. Junior attendants were Kaitlyn Davidson and Jared Simmons. Sophomore attendants were Dylanie Abplanalp and Chris Alarcon. Freshman attendants were Sidney Troutwine and Jacob Wimer. Crown carriers were Bridgette Hightshoe, daughter of Bill and Leena Hightshoe; Camdain Frisch, son of Michael and Katelyn Frisch; Addison Morin, daughter of Jed and Jenny Morin; and Karson Briner, son of Tyrel and Ashley Briner. The Homecoming theme for this year was "Tiger Globetrotters," with the classes decorating the school hallways around the theme.
During the halftime of the boys game, Worth County dance team and junior dance team members performed to a light show. Dance team members this year are Erin Colvin, Tess Andrews, Ashlyn Barnett, and Kennedy Galanakis. Junior members are Anna Spainhower, Allison Larison, Zoey Morin, Kalli Moellenberndt, Olivia Kanak, Megan Cassavaugh, Keelin Engel, Liz Young, Natalie Carlson, Chloe Belback, and Danyelle Jackson.
The boys had several games that were near-misses throughout the year. They had every expectation of coming in and making a game of it against Polo; the Panthers had only three wins for the year. The Tigers had played close in losses to South Harrison and Maysville; against perennial nemesis South Harrison, the Tigers only trailed by five at halftime before losing by 16 despite missing two players for disciplinary reasons. Brevyn Ross had 27 in a losing effort for the Tigers while Jared Simmons followed with 11, both career highs. The Tigers then gave Maysville everything they could handle. It was tied as late as the third quarter, but too little ball movement at the offensive end and too many offensive rebounds at the defensive end contributed to Worth County's demise in a 53-46 loss. Brevyn Ross had 18 in the game.
The boys came in with the goal of shocking the world; last year, they broke a 12-game losing streak with a courtwarming win over Princeton using the theme. They went on to throw a scare into1st seeded Ridgeway before losing by 5. When the Tigers finally got going this year, it was like a dam bursting as Brevyn Ross would not let the Tigers lose their Courtwarming match. He scored the first 10 points of the game as Worth County raced out to an 18-13 lead after one quarter.
Jackson Pile did all he could to get Polo back in the game, going on a scoring burst late in the first and early in the second to bring Polo to within 21-18 at one point. But then Chris Alarcon got a putback and followed with a transition basket to swing the momentum permanently in Worth County's favor. Chris had not even been expected to play after he took an elbow to the face in the Maysville game the night before in the closing seconds, a game in which bodies were frantically flying all over the place in the final period as Worth County was frantically trying to get the ball back. But he shook that off and had 14 points, a career high, against Polo. Chris had played well in last year's Courtwarming win over Princeton as well.
From there, Brevyn Ross carried the Tigers in the final four minutes of the half, getting 13 in just a four minute span as Worth County went from up three to up 23, at 44-21. The final points were when Brevyn lost control on a fast break in the closing seconds of the half; however, he somehow rolled it out to Ben Badell for a buzzer beater. By the half, Brevyn had 25 points as he was going for Bryce's career high of 38 and possibly Kent Thompson's single game record of 51 points.
But Polo did a much better job of shadowing Brevyn, who picked up his second and third fouls and sat out for much of the period. He did hit Truman Moore twice in transition for layups as Truman was running the floor as well as he has throughout his career. Parker Smith did all he could to get Polo back into the game; he scored 14 in the period as Polo got as close as 17 at one point. But what hurt Polo as much as anything was a lack of balanced scoring. Worth County had been struggling to put five people who could score on the floor all year, but Polo had only two players score, Pile and Smith, until late in the third. They combined for Polo's first 40 points. On the other hand, Worth County got four players in double figures and had a fifth score eight points Friday night.
With Brevyn battling foul trouble, Chris Alarcon stepped up his game and repeatedly got loose in transition to keep the Tigers in control; he had six in the period. Finally, Pile got too frustrated and decked Chris as he was trying to score on a putback and was called for an intentional foul and sat out the rest of the game. That play helped kill any comeback hopes for Polo. Worth County scored the first eight points of the fourth quarter before Coach Bryce Shafar felt comfortable enough to put in his bench. Johnny Carlson scored off a Ben Badell steal, Chris Allen hit a free throw, and Jacob Wimer hit a 3-pointer for the reserves.
Brevyn Ross matched his career high from the South Harrison game with 27 points and added 8 assists and six steals. Chris Alarcon had 14, also a career high. Josh Warner, who was muscling his way to the basket against taller opponents all night, had 13 points. Truman Moore had 10 and Ben Badell 8.
Worth County's girls jumped out to a 10-7 lead in the first four minutes, but then picked the wrong time to struggle defensively as they gave up seven 3-pointers from Tabitha Poje as all hell broke loose from that point on and Polo piled it on for the rest of the game, dropping the Tigers 77-31. Kaitlyn Davidson was one of the few bright spots for the Tigers, getting 16 points despite going up against 6-footer Danielle Allen for much of the game. Claire Andrews was shaken up and had to be helped off the court in the third quarter; the Tigers were already down one player as they lost Ally Buffington for the rest of the year (concussion) after she had been steadily improving. This was the third straight ugly blowout loss for the girls as they also fell to South Harrison and Maysville in similar fashion; they also lost to East Harrison as did the boys.
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