01-07-06
BY JACK BULLOCK
WOODLAWN - After losing a conference game on the road at Wayne City on Friday night, the Woodlawn Cardinals were in no mood to mess around on Saturday with their Mid-South Conference foe Thompsonville.

Unfortunately for the Tigers, these Red Birds were seeing "RED."

Using a hard-nosed defense that never let Thompsonville get anything going offensively, Coach Shane Witzel's Cards jumped out to an early lead and coasted home with a 51-35 Mid-South Conference win.

Holding Thompsonville scoreless in the first 6:50 of the contest, Woodlawn held their conference cohorts to a 1-of-12 effort from the field in the opening quarter.

"That (a strong defensive effort) is what we have been looking for and we got it from everyone that we played tonight," said Witzel, whose team improved to 6-6 overall, 2-3 in the Mid-South.
"That is the intensity you got to play with and hopefully tonight that kind of 'flipped the switch.' We got after it on the defensive end and that helped create some offense tonight. I don't think we had a bad stretch at all tonight."

Justin Bonifacius topped the balanced scoring Cards with 13-points on the night.

This 6-foot senior held the hot hand for the Cards in the opening eight minutes.

He scored six points in the first quarter and his fast break lay in off of a Thompsonville turnover made it 6-0 Woodlawn with 5:59 to play.

Justin Kindle converted a conventional three-point play while being fouled by Thompsonville's Ross Heern and reserve freshman Kyle Boldt stepped off the Woodlawn bench and connected on a shot in the lane to make it 12-0 Cardinals.

Included in the run to open the game were four blocked shots and a 5-of-9 shooting performance.

Thompsonville finally dented the scoreboard with a score by Trent Clark late in the frame.

When the first horn sounded, Thompsonville was back on it's heals at 12-2.

"Our plan tonight was the first time that we score that we would go into our zone pressure. Unfortunately it took us nearly the whole quarter to do that," said Thompsonville mentor John Robinson who saw his team fall to 6-9 on the season, 1-3 in the MSC.
"It is frustrating and we thought we were past that (offensive problems) from early in the season. We had won three-in-a-row playing pretty well offensively."

If that opening eight minutes wasn't bad enough for the Tigers, the next 3:25 wasn't much better.

Woodlawn scored the first six points of the second quarter.
Two more buckets by Bonifacius; on an offensive rebound and off of an assist from Jody Kabat, and a 17-footer from Scott McNeil from the left wing made it 18-2 with 4:35 before the half.

Thompsonville managed just a pair of free throws by Derrick Fisher and a late score from Clark in the entire stanza.

But the Cardinals never let up as a pair of baskets by Kabat and a score by Mike Tiemann ended the merciful first half at 26-6 Woodlawn.

"In the first few minutes of the game we weren't getting back on defense and I told the kids that you have to do that, especially on nights when you struggle offensively like we did," added Robinson.

Thompsonville was just 1-of-15 in that second quarter, adding up to 2-of-27 from the field for the first 16 minutes.

The Tigers were much more respectable in the second half, actually outscoring the Cardinals in the final two quarters. They got within 16-points on two different occasions in the third quarter.

A steal and lay in by Clark and a 3-pointer from the right wing from Wade Dial made it 30-16 Woodlawn midway through the quarter.

A late pair of free throws by Fisher cut that deficit to 36-20 with 1:34 to go.

However the Cardinals never allowed the game to get any closer.

An end of the quarter score from reserve Jase Green made it 38-20.

Coach Robinson can take solace that his team didn't quit and they shot free throws extremely well, especially in the final eight minutes.

Thompsonville hit all ten of its attempts from the stripe in the final frame, 16-of-22 for the contest.

But they saw the Cardinals put the game away with a couple of scores that Tiemann had a hand in.

He connected with Bonifacius with a skip pass that resulted in a lay up. Tiemann then scored on a rebound on the next Woodlawn possession that pushed the advantage to 47-26 with 4:38 left.

"That was the hardest I had seen him (Tiemann) play on his floor game," added Witzel. "But it wasn't just him, the five starters and the people we brought off the bench gave us good minutes."

Following Bonifacius' 13 points, Tiemann added 12 and Kabat 10.

The Cards were 23-of-45 from the field and held a 32-27 rebounding edge.

But defensively, they held the Tigers to some 'eye opening' numbers.

Thompsonville was just 9-of-42 (21 percent) from the field and just 1-of-9 from behind the 3-point line.

Add six blocked shots to the Woodlawn total and this performance is something the Cardinals hope will become the norm for the remainder of the season.

"We need to continue to build on this win," added Witzel, whose team has had trouble stringing wins together this season. "I think our guys were upset about last night and that is good to see. You got to hate to lose and hopefully last night at Wayne City served as a wakeup call for us. We have to continue to have that kind of effort on the defensive end."

Coach Robinson agreed with that assessment.

"They (Woodlawn) lost last night and it 'stuck in their craw' and tonight they took it to us and you have to give them credit," finalized Robinson. "Our kids fought hard even though we were down 20-points. But I told the kids that we could either get on the bus and say 'Oh Well' or we can come back Monday and try and get better."

Woodlawn is back to the hardwood next week with road games at Odin on Tuesday and Webber Township on Friday.

Thompsonville will get a few days to think about their loss before hosting undefeated Waltonville on Friday night.

	1	2	3	4		Final
Thompsonville	2	4	14	15	-	35
Woodlawn	12	14	12	13	-	51

Thompsonville (35) - Clark 4 0 1-4 9, Dial 2 1 5-8 12, Heern 1 0 2-2 4, D. Fisher 1 0 4-4 6, J. Fisher 0 0 0-0 0, Browning 0 0 4-4 4, Gaither 0 0 0-0 0, Sickmeyer 0 0 0-0 0, Householder 0 0 0-0 0, Ja. Nelson 0 0 0-0 0.
2FG-8, 3FG-1, FT-16-22, PF-13.
Woodlawn (51) - McNeil 1 0 3-4 5, Kindle 3 0 1-1 7, Tiemann 6 0 0-0 12, Bonifacius 6 0 1-4 13, Kabat 5 0 0-0 10, Ritchey 0 0 0-0 0, Hassler 0 0 0-0 0, Shurtz 0 0 0-0 0, Boldt 1 0 0-0 2, Hart 0 0 0-0 0, Meador 0 0 0-0 0, Green 1 0 0-0 2, Irvin 0 0 0-0 0.
2FG-23, 3FG-0, FT-5-10, PF-19.
Fouled Out - None.
Technical Fouls - None.