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Brady Schilling’s 17 points leads Fort Frye to OVAC 3A title

Photo by Mike Morrison Fort Frye’s Brady Schilling (2) drives to the basket during Saturday’s Ohio Valley Athletic Conference 3A championship game against Union Local.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — For the second Saturday a Fort Frye basketball team made the trip to Ohio University Eastern with hopes of securing an Ohio Valley 3A championship with a win over Union Local and for the second straight the Cadets got the job done.

After the Dan Liedtke-coached Cadets claimed the title last week with a 46-41 win, the boys lived up to their end as well with a 57-47 win over the Jets to claim their first OVAC crown since 2014.

Senior Brady Schilling led the way for the Fort with 17 points as the Cadets jumped out to a 15-point halftime lead and then withstood a second half comeback bid by Union Local to improve to 17-3 on the season.

“It was nice to jump out to that big lead and then even better to be able to hold onto it,” said Cadet head coach Eric Henniger. “We knew Union Local was very capable of making big runs so our guys did a great job of holding them off every time they tried to.”

Fort Frye wasted little time in building their lead as they scored the first seven points of the game including a triple from senior Zane Wallace.

The Cadets managed to increase their lead to nine (16-7) at the end of one quarter and quickly pushed it to 17 thanks to a 9-1 run to open the second quarter.

Five of those Cadet points came from junior guard Luke Huffman and the other four came on lay-ups by Brian Adkins and Schilling.

Union Local cut the lead back to 10 in a matter of seconds thanks to an old-fashioned three-point play by Nathan Meyer and a rare four-point play by Luke Merritt but the Cadets finished strong with a field goal by Schilling and a triple by Kelton Fogle to head to the intermission with a comfortable 30-15 lead.

The Jets put together a strong third quarter to pull to within 11 and then quickly made things interesting in the fourth quarter when Merritt drained a triple to make it an eight-point game with plenty of time remaining on the clock for a Jets comeback.

As they would be able to do the entire game the Cadets had an answer as Huffman splashed in his second triple of the night before a baseline jumper by Wallace pushed the lead back to 43-31 with six minutes to play.

Local managed to chip the lead down to six with a minute to play but the fundamentally sound Cadets were solid from the charity stripe to put things away and claim the title.

Schilling was the recipient of the John Howell MVP award after adding five rebounds and three assists to his 17-point game.

“Brady takes care of the ball, he plays awesome defense, he can rebound, he can just do a little bit of everything to help us win basketball games,” said Henniger of his 6-foot-2 senior. “He is able to handle things when other teams apply pressure and he is such a huge part of our team.”

Fogle added 13 points along with four assists while Huffman reached double-figures with 11 for the winners while Merrit and Meyer led the way for the Jets (15-6) with 16 and 14 points respectively.

“I thought Luke Huffman played an awesome game for us tonight,” said Henniger of his junior guard, who continues to impress after moving into the starting lineup several games ago. “I felt like he was shooting the shots that we needed him to shoot and knocking them down.”

With the OVAC trophy heading back to Beverly, the Cadets have a huge test Tuesday night at home against undefeated Williamstown before opening tournament play at home on February 25th.

“It’s been a really great couple of weeks for Fort Frye basketball to kind of match what the girls did,” said Henniger. “Now we have to get right back to work and get ready for a great Williamstown team and tournament play.”

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