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The Miamisburg-West Carrollton News is now available on-line at:

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! WoW !, The Pirates won the now-titled "crosstown" shoot-out last Friday. Complete article at:

http://www.mwcnews.com/mwc/story.asp?SID=2245

Pirates plunder Vikings in Crosstown Jam - 04 DEC 2004

John Cummings, Sports Editor

Entering the Crosstown Jam Friday night, Miamisburg boys basketball coach Jim Robinson figured the Vikings had their work cut out for them.“We knew that we had to take Drew (Frahm) and Brian (Corn) out of things for them offensively,” Robinson said. “And, Chad (Muntzinger) was a whole other story.“The thing was their role players stepped up.”West Carrollton coach Dan Gerhard can understand why the Vikings felt the way they did.“Most people feel the same way as coach Robinson feels,” Gerhard said after the Pirates battled for a 51-44 win over the Vikings. “I thought Chad stepped up for us.“And, on the other side, we had other players who really stepped up for us.”However, early on, it looked like the Vikings were going to follow the lead their female counterparts had left in the game prior to theirs.Billy Kitchen scored the first three points of the night before Dante Robinson sliced through the lane for a basket and a 5-0 lead with 5:15 left in the first quarter. Matt Engle scored the first points of the season for the Pirates with 4:23 left in the quarter, but Cody Blevins and Nick Mangen each hit shots for the Vikings for a 9-2 lead.Muntzinger scored his first points of the season with 2:38 left in the quarter before Kitchen pushed the lead to 12-4 with 2:18. Muntzinger closed the gap to six heading into the second quarter.Mangen started the second quarter off with a three pointer to push the lead to 15-6, but Gerhard believed that the Pirates could come back.“In this rivalry, when a team gets a good start, unless they have that killer instinct, the other team is going to come back,” Gerhard said. “It was nothing to push the panic button on.“We didn’t like seeing what we did at the beginning of the game, but we knew that we could come back and right the ship.”Patrick Wall scored six straight to cut the lead to 17-12 before Engle got the lead to three with 2:17 left in the half. Mangen pushed the lead back to five with 1:41 left in the half, but Engle answered with a basket before Justin Winiecki canned a three pointer to tie the game at 19-19.Sam Mote gave the Vikings the lead back with a free throw before Danny Manning hit a short jumper with :12 left before the half to give the Pirates a 21-20 lead at the break.“We felt like we should have been ahead by 15,” Robinson said. “But, even after scoring six points in the first quarter and being down, they never died.“As soon as they took the lead, I had the sense that the wind had been taken out of our sails.”In the Pirate locker room, it was a sign that things were starting to turn around.“We had been down most of the half, and I think this gave us a little momentum,” Gerhard said. “We were down most of the half, and after fighting back, it made us feel the next half was ours.“We figured that we can’t shoot much worse than we did in the first half, and we were not playing well so the second half had to be better.”The second half got off to a fast start for the Pirates as Manning hit a shot jumper and a three pointer right out of the chute to push the lead to 26-20 before Frahm scored his first points of the season on a short turn around jumpe for a 28-20 lead with 6:06 left in the third quarter.“There is no gray area with this team,” Robinson said. “We are either good or we are flat out bad.“You can even see that in practices. We will go from being fantastic to looking like we have never touched a ball, and that is something that we have to fix.”Blevins converted a three point play to get the Vikings on the board in the second half before Frahm hit a short jumper and Kitchen continued the trend of swapping baskets. Muntzinger answered Kitchen, but Mangen answered with a three ponter and LJ Griffin scored underneath to cut the West Carrollton lead to 32-30 with 2:24 left in the quarter.West Carrollton, however, closed with a 8-0 lead to push the lead to 10 heading into the final quarter.Winiecki hit a three pointer before Muntzinger stuck the putback after grabbing a rebound and Winiecke recorded a steal and stopped and drained the three pointer with :09 left for a 40-30 lead heading into the final eight minutes.“We had a good run there,” Gerhard said. “We were in position where we could put the game out of reach when you get the lead up to 10.“If we make a basket here, or there, then we could really put the game away.”Mangen keyed a 9-2 run to open the final stanza that cut the deficit to 42-39 when Blevins hit a short jumper. West Carrollton, however, came back with a tip in by Muntzinger and a basket by Manning to push the lead to 46-39. Robinson converted a three point play with 2:38 left in the game to cut the deficit to 46-42, but that was the closest the Vikings would get.

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- posted by Mikey @ 1:42 PM