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Warriors fall to D1 6th-ranked Cavaliers

Photo by Mike Morrison Warren's Josh Welch (23) goes up for a basket as Chillicothe's Kam smith defends during Thursday's game in Vincent.

VINCENT — Athletic. Strong. Quick. Long. Explosive. Defensively solid.

Any of these would have been acceptable ways to describe a Chillicothe Cavalier team that is ranked sixth in Division I.

For the first 20 minutes of Thursday night’s battle between visiting Chillicothe and Warren, the Warriors found a way to hang with the Cavs but in the end the visitors were just too much as they pulled away to a 62-40 win.

With a Chillicothe roster that features a pair of athletic bigs in 6-foot-8 Brandon Noel and 6-6 Jayvon Maughmer to go along with an outstanding senior point guard in Tre Beard, the Warriors had their work cut out for them and for two and half quarters they held their own.

With Warren trailing by just six points with four minutes to play in the third, the Cavs took things to a new level as they went on a 10-0 run that featured slam dunks by both Noel and Maughmer to open up a 16-point lead.

“We were able to keep it close for a half and a little bit of the third quarter but we just weren’t able to score,” said Warren head coach Blane Maddox. “They are a very hard team to score on and we needed to hit some more 3s to keep it close.”

Warren actually led by three (10-7) at the end of the first quarter before the Cavs went on a 12-2 run sparked by a pair of triples from Beard to open up a 17-12 lead.

A bucket by sophomore Brayden Sallee broke the Chillicothe momentum and the home team finished the half strong when Dennis Pettey came off the bench to knock down a late 3-pointer to cut the lead to 24-19 at the half.

Beard tossed in 13 points in the opening half but Warren did a great job on Noel and Maughmer as they limited them to five and six points respectively in the first 16 minutes.

That would all change in the third period as the Cavs out-pointed the Warriors by a 22-9 margin with Noel and Maughmer accounting for 17 of those points.

“They got loose. Our gaps got too big and they just penetrated and we didn’t rotate another spot,” said Maddox. “We’d rotate one but against a team like that you have got to rotate two or three and they got on a roll.”

The Cavaliers stretched their lead to 20 early in the final quarter as they opened on a 5-0 run and they easily rolled the rest of the way to notch their 15th win of the season against just four losses.

Noel led all scorers with 24 points and 14 rebounds, while Beard added 20.

Maughmer added 15 points, eight boards and five assists as the Cavs’ big three accounted for all but three of their points.

Warren senior Brandon Simoniette was the only Warrior to reach double figures as he finished with 11 points while Evan Byrd and Sallee added six apiece.

Sallee led his team in rebounds with eight and steals with four.

Warren slipped to 11-7 with the loss, one that Maddox hopes will be beneficial with tournament play right around the corner.

“We beat them the last couple of times so we knew they were going to come in here hungry,” said Maddox, whose team will travel to Parkerburg Catholic on Saturday afternoon. “We have played as tough a schedule in D2 as any team in Southeastern Ohio and we’ll just keep lining them up. We likely won’t see a team that big and that quick again.”

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