Greater Columbus high school basketball: 5 things we learned from Jan. 22-28
Pennant fever is hitting high school basketball as January winds down.
Maybe it's “banner fever,” but several local girls teams are on the cusp of league championships and some boys teams are closing in. Not only that, we are less than a week from the girls district tournament draws Sunday.
The boys follow seven days later.
Here are five things we learned this past week:
1. Centennial girls close in on City League title game
Stars coach Ernest Bell saw his team “knocking at the door” of the City League-North championship a season ago, and the addition of freshman guard Kennedy Houston has put Centennial (14-1, 11-0) one win away from its first City final since 2015.
Houston’s 19.2 points, 7.5 steals, 6.3 assists and 5.1 rebounds per game pace the Stars. Returning starters Aza Corbett (12.4 points, 16.3 rebounds, 4.1 steals) and Kayla Houston (17.8 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.2 steals, 3.3 assists), both juniors, helped lay the foundation last year.
Centennial routed perennial league power Northland 74-27 on Friday and would clinch the title Tuesday with a win over Linden-McKinley.
“It’s still a young team (with one senior), but they have just come together,” Bell said. “They understand that while they could be great individual players, that the team goals supersede all. We could see this coming. We just didn’t know, given how young we were. But early in the season, even when we had things to work on, I could tell we might be special.”
Northland has won 11 of the past 13 City-North titles. The Vikings lost senior guard Tanai Bowles for the season to a broken right ankle last week, but Northland and Centennial agreed that she could score the first basket Friday for senior night.
2. Germany steps up for Ready boys
The Silver Knights faced a reload after graduating four of five starters from last year’s Division II state semifinalist team, and one of the players who came off the bench has become what coach Tony Bisutti called the team’s “alpha.”
Senior Micah Germany, a 6-foot-1 combo guard, averages 17 points to pace Ready (12-4, 4-1), which is locked in a tight race atop the Central Buckeye League with Columbus Academy (13-2, 7-1) and Worthington Christian (11-4, 6-1).
Germany scored all 15 of his points last Monday against Eastmoor Academy on five first-half 3-pointers in a 68-35 win.
“He had a tremendous spring and summer; if there’s a more improved player in central Ohio, I’d like to see him,” Bisutti said. “A lot of people probably think he’s come out of nowhere. He’s been a really good player at both ends of the court.”
Junior forward Kayden Schaffer is Ready’s only returning starter. Bisutti said Germany was “our seventh or eighth guy” a season ago.
“Micah is definitely our alpha but there’s a different guy each night stepping up, whether it’s scoring, rebounding or assisting,” Bisutti said. “It’s fun to coach a group like that. It makes us harder to guard, harder to prepare for.”
3. Northland boys remain atop City-North
Perhaps even more balanced than last year’s team that edged eventual Division III state semifinalist Africentric in the City championship game, the Vikings (13-3, 10-0 City-North) are thriving with the combination of junior forward Nehemiah McMorris and sophomore point guard King Kendrick.
Kendrick already holds numerous Division I offers. In his first year with the team after moving in from Gahanna, the 6-8 McMorris scores from multiple levels — like Kendrick — and provides matchup problems across the floor.
“He’s typically a stretch-4, where he can shoot from outside, put it on the floor and pass well,” coach Tihon Johnson said. “We hang our hat on our defense (allowing 46 points per game). We have a lot of versatility on defense, then King is one of the best point guards in the state, so he gets us going. He pushes the tempo and slows it down when we need to slow it down.”
Northland leads Linden (12-6, 9-1) by a game in the North. The league title could hinge on their meeting on Friday.
4. Africentric, Westerville South girls relish challenges
Coaches often mention scheduling tough non-league games to help prepare their teams for the postseason. Saturday's South-Africentric matchup qualified as one of those contests, with host Africentric holding off the Wildcats 62-58 in the Nubian Classic.
Senior guard Natiah Nelson led the Nubians (16-2, 12-0 City-South) with 15 points. Sophomore guard Jeniya Bowers scored 12, and senior guard Kamryn Grant and senior forward Samairah Thompson added 11 apiece.
“We want to play the best if we want to be the best,” Africentric coach Janicia Anderson said. “Our schedule is always going to filled with teams outside of our division and teams that we know are championship-caliber.”
Freshman point guard CirRye White led South (11-6, 9-2 OCC-Capital) with 22 points and sophomore guard Ariyana Cradle scored 14. Cradle made her season debut Jan. 5 against Canal Winchester after missing the first nine games with a knee injury.
“This is going to be a tale of three seasons,” Wildcats coach Jermaine Guice said. “The initial season is without Ariyana, then my second season is with Ariyana first coming back and then that last stretch is going to be when everybody knows their roles and everybody is locked into what we’re doing, and hopefully we’re heading into that stretch of it.”
Africentric, the defending Division III state champion, has secured a spot in the City League title game against the City-North winner.
5. Miller hopes to lead turnaround for Franklin Heights boys
In his second season at Franklin Heights, veteran coach Ray Miller's program remains a work in progress.
He hopes his team's move to the Central Buckeye League next season will help his efforts to build a winner. The Falcons are 2-14 overall and 2-8 in the OCC-Capital, with both wins coming against Canal Winchester.
“To turn a program around, it takes a few years,” Miller said. “We’re being asked to play (OCC) schools that ... (have) two to three times more boys than we have.”
In the CBL, the Falcons will join Bexley, Buckeye Valley, Columbus Academy, Grandview Heights, Ready, Whitehall-Yearling and Worthington Christian.
“You’re not going from great teams to teams that can’t play, you’re just going down to schools with boys populations closer to ours,” Miller said. “That’s the big thing.”
Key players for the Falcons have been senior guards Thad Gambrell and Justin Lovejoy, sophomore guard Javeon Byas, sophomore post player Trent Williams-Hawthorne and freshman guard Izzy Ludaway.
The second meeting against Canal Winchester, a 52-49 victory last Tuesday, was Miller’s 500th career win.
“It was a great experience because of the way it was handled by the administration and our players and fans,” Miller said of the ceremony recognizing his feat. “I was pleasantly surprised and very happy with their presentation. They planned it out and I really appreciated it.”
Miller’s career includes stops in Ohio and Nevada, with stints at Grove City, Hamilton Township and West Jefferson. He was 145-140 in 13 seasons (two stints) at Grove City, earning Division I state Coach of the Year in 1999, and 47-55 in five seasons at West Jefferson, earning Division III state Coach of the Year in 2005.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Central Ohio high school basketball: 5 things we learned Jan. 22-28
