Roughriders' height too much for Redmen

LIMA – Some things you just can't practice for and in the case of Fostoria High School's boys basketball team, that thing was height.Three of the starters for St. Marys Memorial – including 6-foot-11 Ohio State signee Austin Parks – were taller than anybody on the Redmen roster.Parks used that height advantage to block shots and score a game-high 27 points, most of them in the paint, to lead the Roughriders to a 75-47 victory over FHS in Division II sectional play at Lima Senior High School Friday night.St. Marys (18-5 overall) advanced to face Van Wert in a district semifinal at Liberty-Benton High School Thursday at 6 p.m. The Cougars advanced with a 65-34 win over Elida in the second sectional final. Fostoria finished the season with a 10-14 mark."I was very, very pleased with the way we battled," Fostoria coach Thom Loomis said. "It's a very large challenge, no pun intended. Six-eleven, 6'-7", 6'-6" is not something we've faced in any of these guys careers. Parks is the real deal, but they play really well off of him and we knew that."I thought the first half we did a lot of good things and they just physically kind of wore us down."The Redmen lead early Jayceon Tucker opened the scoring with a 3-pointer, then followed Jace Turner's field goal with a bucket of his own for a 5-2 lead at 5:35. Turner canned his own trey at 5:14 to tie the game, then Parks scored at 4:27 to put the Roughriders in the lead for good. Parks got the home crowd cheering with a dunk at 4:06 to extend the lead to 9-5, but Tucker tallied his second 3-pointer of the quarter to cut the score to 9-8 at 2:29. Turner scored again in the final minute to give St. Mary's an 11-8 lead after one.The Roughriders started to pull away with a 9-0 run midway through the second quarter with points from Turner, a 3-pointer by Evan Angstmann, a fast break layup by Cobain Owens after a Redmen turnover, and another dunk by Parks. St. Mary's led by as much as 35-19 late in the second, but the Redmen scored eight of the last 10 points, with 3-pointers from Gavin Miller and Ryan O'Neal, and a pair of free throws from Jordan Ferguson, cutting the differential to 37-27 at halftime.The third quarter is where the Roughriders pulled away from Fostoria, outscoring the Redmen 20-6. Turner, Angstmann and Parks each scored six points to match the FHS total for the period.Despite being down 57-33 at the start of the final quarter, the Redmen kept battling, with Machi Johnson scoring 10 points in the final frame.Tucker paced the Redmen with 13 points while Johnson finished with 12 points. Ferguson dished a team high four assists on the night.Turner finished with 21 points for the Roughriders, followed by Angstmann's 14 points and a 10-point effort by Owens.Aidan Sprang was the only senior on the Redmen roster."Sad to see Aidan Sprang go," Loomis said. "That kid did everything that we asked him to do. He was a tremendous leader, he accepted his role, he played defense, he worked as hard as anybody every day, never complained, always brought it to the gym. He kind of set the standard for what our guys need to see."