By Noah Dalton
MITCHELL — Mitchell High School closed their regular season on Friday, taking on defending 3A Indiana State Champion Scottsburg at The Hive.
The game served as Senior Night for the Bluejackets, who have six senior players on this year’s roster: Austin Mosier, Aiden Pridemore, Nate Robertson, Tate Woods, Carl Chenault and Logan Kender.
The night was a resounding success for Mitchell, who picked up their first win over the Warriors in six years, beating them 69-61.
As they’ve been for much of the season, the senior group was a huge key to the Bluejackets’ victory, particularly late in the game, scoring many of their points down the stretch to seal the win.
The win is the team’s 16th of the season, a mark the program had previously been unable to reach since 2000. In his first year leading the program, head coach Clint Roesler hopes the outcomes of this season can serve as the catalyst that drives Mitchell basketball to succeed for years to come and he credits this season’s seniors as a huge piece of getting them started.
“This is win number 16 and we’re still rolling. That’s a huge mark. If we get to one more, it’s the most wins since 1987, and that means something and those six are a massive part of that and a massive part of the buzz and excitement that we want everybody to have about Mitchell basketball,” said Roesler.
“We want our youth programs to look at Aiden, Nate, Carl, Kender, Tate and Mosier and be like, man, I want to be those guys, I can’t wait to be on the court. They’ve done that this year and I can’t be any more proud of them.”
Roesler noted that the seniors and their willingness to buy-in to the changes he wanted to implement was a big key to their success this season.
“I just want to keep playing and I’m not ready to lose those guys. I’m not ready to not be around those guys because they just mean a lot to us and as a coach they mean a lot to me,” he said. “Coming in as seniors and you’ve got a coach that’s trying to change everything you do and do a different system, it would be very easy to just be like, no, we’re doing it the way we’ve been doing it, but from day one they took to it.”
In the game, the two sides traded baskets early for a back-and-forth start with the Bluejackets closing the first quarter on an 8-0 run to take a 17-13 lead. Scottsburg charged back in the second, largely led by the efforts from center Garrett Boling.
Boling scored 11 in the second quarter, including a pair of back-to-back threes to give the Warriors a two-point lead, 29-27, heading into halftime. He finished the first half with 19 points and forced Mitchell to make some adjustments during the break in an attempt to slow him down.
They decided to switch their defensive matchup against him late, going from the size of 6-foot-8 Robertson to the speed of Gavin Robinson, which paid off. Boling was held to just seven points for the remainder of the game, including a scoreless fourth quarter.
“We switched towards the last couple of minutes of the game and had Gavin (Robinson) guarding him and they had a guy, they actually had a guy that wasn’t shooting the ball at a high level, so we put Nate (Robertson) on to that guy and it helped towards the end of the half and we continued that,” said Roesler. “Our defensive style has grown tremendously throughout this year and it showed tonight. They made us run everywhere to try to guard them. Towards the end of that fourth quarter, we were able to do it at such a high level and cause turnovers.”
It wasn’t just defensively that Mitchell stepped up in the second half.
They scored 26 points in the fourth quarter, just a point shy of their entire first half output. Robinson, who was the team’s leading scorer on the night with 20 points, netted nine in the fourth. Aiding him was Woods, who scored seven after a previously scoreless start to the night and Pridemore, who scored six on back-to-back threes of his own.
“I felt like we got the momentum and anytime we get the momentum, I don’t know how many teams around us can stop us, but us with momentum is a tough thing to stop,” said Roesler.
“We had it and we kept it and the energy was high and everyone was just in sync and that’s what it’s all about.”
Next up for the Bluejackets is the postseason, with their first matchup of 2A Sectional 46 coming up on Tuesday, March 4.
In that game, Mitchell will square off against Salem, an opponent who got the better of them early in the season.
Roesler was unable to coach that due to a suspension after receiving two technical fouls in a previous outing. The night was a tough one for the Bluejackets, who got behind early and struggled to get anything going, ultimately losing 64-50.
“With everything that happened beforehand, the fact that I wasn’t there, Coach Spears still remembers it. He feels terrible about it.I know the guys don’t like it. So, there’s going to be a lot of emotions just because of what happened earlier in the year,” said Roesler.
“They played us in a zone in the first game and I feel like we are much better at attacking the zone now than we were then. So if they want to try that, that’s fine. We’ve shown that we win against any kind of style, so we’ll be prepared to do what we can do on our end.”
They’ll look to advance in the tournament with a win, with their ultimate goal being a sectional championship, which would be the program’s first since 1997.
With a win, they’ll face Providence in the second round for a bid in the championship game. On the other side of the bracket are Crawford County, Eastern (Pekin), Clarksville and Paoli, the No.10 ranked team in Indiana’s 2A division.
“To win it all and to beat the best to do it, there’s no better story than that. For their whole entire lives, those kids will be able to come back here and look at that banner and see a 25 on there and know it was them and be able to tell the stories and tell the silly locker room stuff that we do and practice stuff and just relive those moments,” said Roesler.
“From a personal standpoint, it’s why I’m here,” he continued. “I just love basketball and I put a lot of heart into it. It’s not about me, it’s about the program, but to me, it would just be an incredible feeling.”
Box Score
Mitchell Stats
Points: 69 | FGM: 25/49 | FG%: 51.02% | 3PM: 5/82 | 3P%: 6.10% | FTM: 14/17 | FT%: 82.35% | Rebounds: 34 | Team Turnovers: 12
Individual Player Stats for Mitchell:
#2 Austin Mosier – Points: 8 | FGM: 3/13 | FG%: 23.08% | 3PM: 2/77 | 3P%: 2.60% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 8
#1 Aiden Pridemore – Points: 16 | FGM: 5/7 | FG%: 71.43% | 3PM: 3/4 | 3P%: 75.00% | FTM: 3/4 | FT%: 75.00% | Rebounds: 3
#40 Nate Robertson – Points: 10 | FGM: 5/8 | FG%: 62.50% | 3PM: 0/0 | 3P%: 0% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 5
#22 Gavin Robinson – Points: 20 | FGM: 6/12 | FG%: 50.00% | 3PM: 0/0 | 3P%: 0% | FTM: 8/9 | FT%: 88.89% | Rebounds: 13
#12 Carl Chenault – Points: 6 | FGM: 2/3 | FG%: 66.67% | 3PM: 0/0 | 3P%: 0% | FTM: 2/2 | FT%: 100.00% | Rebounds: 2
#4 Malakai Goodman – Points: 2 | FGM: 1/1 | FG%: 100.00% | 3PM: 0/0 | 3P%: 0% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 1
#20 Kaden Mullis – Points: 0 | FGM: 0/1 | FG%: 0.00% | 3PM: 0/0 | 3P%: 0% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 0
#3 Tate Woods – Points: 7 | FGM: 3/4 | FG%: 75.00% | 3PM: 0/1 | 3P%: 0.00% | FTM: 1/2 | FT%: 50.00% | Rebounds: 2
#21 Garrett Floerke – Points: | FGM: / | FG%: 0% | 3PM: / | 3P%: 0% | FTM: / | FT%: 0% | Rebounds:
#10 Gavin Martin – Points: | FGM: / | FG%: 0% | 3PM: / | 3P%: 0% | FTM: / | FT%: 0% | Rebounds:
#30 Blake King – Points: | FGM: / | FG%: 0% | 3PM: / | 3P%: 0% | FTM: / | FT%: 0% | Rebounds:
#11 Logan Kender – Points: 0 | FGM: 0/0 | FG%: 0% | 3PM: 0/0 | 3P%: 0% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 0
Scottsburg Stats
Points: 61 | FGM: 23/50 | FG%: 46.00% | 3PM: 10/25 | 3P%: 40.00% | FTM: 3/6 | FT%: 50.00% | Rebounds: 17 | Team Turnovers: 8
Individual Player Stats for Scottsburg:
#2 Caden Howell – Points: 0 | FGM: 0/1 | FG%: 0.00% | 3PM: 0/1 | 3P%: 0.00% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 2
#3 Braden Cox – Points: 19 | FGM: 7/18 | FG%: 38.89% | 3PM: 3/6 | 3P%: 50.00% | FTM: 1/2 | FT%: 50.00% | Rebounds: 2
#4 Garrett Boling – Points: 26 | FGM: 10/17 | FG%: 58.82% | 3PM: 5/11 | 3P%: 45.45% | FTM: 2/2 | FT%: 100.00% | Rebounds: 4
#12 Ethan Robison – Points: 8 | FGM: 3/4 | FG%: 75.00% | 3PM: 0/0 | 3P%: 0% | FTM: 0/2 | FT%: 0.00% | Rebounds: 3
#14 Jarin Luttrell – Points: 8 | FGM: 3/7 | FG%: 42.86% | 3PM: 2/5 | 3P%: 40.00% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 4
#5 Hayden Thomas – Points: 0 | FGM: 0/2 | FG%: 0.00% | 3PM: 0/1 | 3P%: 0.00% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 2
#42 Braelyn Kleehammer – Points: 0 | FGM: 0/1 | FG%: 0.00% | 3PM: 0/1 | 3P%: 0.00% | FTM: 0/0 | FT%: 0% | Rebounds: 0
.png)
