MIDDLETOWN — It rained inside the Middletown High School gym Wednesday night. No, not the wet stuff that falls out of the sky and fills reservoirs. In this case it was orange, round and kept dropping through the Stuart Hall basket even though it originated from far, far away.
In fact, it poured on the Middletown Mustangs as their season ended with a 63-33 loss to the 10th-seeded Knights (16-11) in the opening round of the North Coast Section Division 4 playoffs. The same San Francisco team that beat Middletown 54-46 in a 2018 playoff opener at Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco struck again four years later, but this time on on the seventh-seeded Mustangs’ home floor, and this time by hitting 14 shots from behind — and many times well behind — the 3-point arc.
“I talked to their coach (Stuart Hall veteran Charles Johnson) after the game and the first thing he said to me is, ‘We haven’t shot the ball like that all year,’ ” Middletown head coach G.J. Rockwell said. “And the really frustrating thing is that every game film we watched of them they didn’t shoot the ball like that. They were hot when the game started and they never cooled off.”
Stuart Hall’s first three baskets and four of its first five were 3-pointers. The only one that wasn’t was a three-point play by Sterling Luddington-Simmons, who scored on a baseline drive, drew the foul and made the free three. The Mustangs trailed 15-3 late in the first quarter before senior Brody Breeden hit back-to-back baskets in the finals seconds of the period to bring Middletown back into it at 15-7. The Mustangs wouldn’t have back-to-back baskets again until early in the fourth quarter, by which time they were trailing by nearly 30 points.
“As hot as they were, we were ice-cold,” Rockwell said of the perfect storm of events that brought his team’s season to an ugly end. “We were getting what we wanted offensively but there was a lid on the basket. We couldn’t make a dang shot and it was very frustrating.”
Middletown (20-4), the North Central League I co-champion this season, continued to lose ground to the Knights, big chunks of it, the remainder of the night. Stuart Hall opened the second quarter with a 8-0 surge that featured back-to-back 3-pointers by Owen Akel and Brandon Lum. Middletown finally scored with 3:59 left in the first half, but the Knights would cruise into halftime with a 29-12 lead.
Rockwell did his best to fire up his team, especially his many seniors, just as the third quarter was about to begin, but there was just no stopping the Knights. While Middletown’s defense extended out to cover Stuart Hall’s shooters, the Knights were finding the basket from well behind the 3-point arc everywhere on the floor — from the corner, the wing and the top of the key. Even when they appeared to be covered, Stuart Hall’s players used their dribble quite effectively to sidestep the pressure and open up just enough space between themselves and their Middletown defenders to get a clean look at the basket, and they wasted no time shooting the ball.
“We were contesting those shots but they were shooting them from so far out, I guess we needed to cover them from the moment they got off the bus,” Rockwell said of the Knights.
Middletown’s attempt to extend its defense often left the Mustangs vulnerable inside and the Knights took advantage by working the ball down low with pinpoint passing and quick moves to the basket.
Once Stuart Hall’s lead climbed into the mid-20-point range, the Knights also proved masterful at milking the 35-second possession clock, often holding the ball until it rolled under 15 seconds. They effectively reduced the number of possessions Middletown would have by doing that.
“They are a good team, a deep team and a well-coached team,” Rockwell said.
Middletown’s final game also saw the Mustangs without a healthy starting senior guard in Cole Ketchum, a big playmaker for the team who re-aggravated a high-ankle sprain in the team’s win over Kelseyville on Saturday in the league finale. Though he received non-stop treatment for the injury the last few days, Ketchum was extremely limited in what he could do, according to Rockwell.
“I know he was frustrated,” Rockwell said. “He couldn’t move like he normally does when he’s healthy. He tried, he did his best, but it wasn’t going to happen for him tonight.”
Rockwell said things like Wednesday night happen during the course of a long basketball season and there’s not much you can do about it.
“When you play 25 or 26 games, things like this are going to happen to you,” he said. “It’s unfortunate it had to happen tonight, but it did. When you lose like this, it sucks.”
The Knights had four players score in double figures and divided their 14 treys between five players. They made at least two 3-pointers in every quarter.
Breeden capped his high school basketball career with a 16-point performance and reserve Wyatt Grothe added eight points. No one else had more than five.
“I’m gonna miss my seniors, I mean I really am,” Rockwell said. “This was a really fun group to coach. They gave you everything every day. It was a weird season (with all the COVID-19 postponements) but we still got to 20 wins, we got a banner (league championship), and we won two tournaments (Pierce and the Stokes). You can’t hang your head over one loss.”
In fact, the Mustangs set three goals for themselves before the season began back in late November and they accomplished two of them.
“We wanted to win the (league) title, we wanted 20 wins, and we wanted a playoff win,” Rockwell said.
They got the first two before the rain started to fall Wednesday.
