Goshen’s Stephen Voto is one of 11 Warriors who average at least a field goal a night.

Goshen’s Stephen Voto is one of 11 Warriors who average at least a field goal a night.
By Chris Chaney
Sun staff

The 2014-15 season has been a tale of two halves to this point for the Goshen Warriors.

The team began the season in defensive struggles, playing mostly in sub-50-point contests. However, as the calendar turned into the New Year, the Warriors have found a more potent offense albeit at the expense of the other end of the floor.

“We’ve played a lot more efficiently (lately),” head coach Scott Wake said. “Offensively, we’ve kind of turned things around and now, our defense has gone in the wrong direction.

“We’ve got to pick it back up defensively and hit the boards, but we’ve been a lot better offensively, had some guys step up and knock down some shots.”

To illustrate the point, the Warriors averaged 46.0 points per game over the first six games of the season and have put up 59.0 over the last seven. Wake said he believes somewhere in there is a happy balance.

At 8-5 overall and 3-2 in the Southern Buckeye Conference American Division, Wake said he believes his team is right where he expected them to be given their quality of play thus far.

“We look at the league standings right now and it’s right in line,” he said. “Amelia’s got no losses, New Richmond’s got one, we’ve got two, Batavia has three…

“We’ve fallen right into the middle, which is just about the way we’ve played. Against Amelia in a one-point game, we had the ball with a chance to win the game and missed the shot, so we’re pretty much right where I thought we may be, but they’ve all been close.”

Goshen’s close call with Amelia was a microcosm of their season.

Each game has come down to the wire and it’s a winning mentality that Wake believes they are developing that could be the difference as they embark on their second time through the conference.

With the exception of Goshen’s 14-point loss to New Richmond, the other four league games they’ve played have been decided by five points or less.

The Warriors’ offensive balance has been a good reason why they’ve won more than they’ve lost down stretch of those close games; 11 players average at least a field goal per game, led by Cody Schock’s 10.9.

“Cody Schock has played well and been pretty consistent as far as scoring and rebounding,” Wake said. “His shooting percentage has come up over the past couple of weeks.”

Schock is doing a little bit of everything and, as Wake said, is shooting nearly 60 percent from the field. His 7.8 rebounds per game are tops on the team and third in the SBC and his 58 blocks is second in the Southwest Ohio district behind only Malik Sheldon of Western Hills.

Ryan Wake has stepped into more of a scoring role of late for Goshen, spreading defenses with his outside shooting ability to keep them from collapsing down low on Schock and junior Logan Brand.

For the Warriors to get a piece of the league title, their balanced offense will need to rediscover the stingy defense the team played in the first part of the season. Wake said that the team is concentrating on merging the two bright spots from the first 15 games to make the last eight as successful as possible.

“Defense is something we need to pick back up on,” Wake said. “I thought we were pretty decent early on in the year defensively, but we didn’t shoot the ball well. Now, we’re shooting the ball well, but our defense has dropped off.

“That’s been our focus here the last two or three practices — getting back to communication and talking on defense and understanding our opponents in our scouting reports.”

The Warriors hosted Felicity-Franklin on Tuesday, Jan. 27. That score was not available at the time of press. Goshen gets back into conference play on Friday when they travel to Western Brown.

Beginning with the showdown with the Broncos, five of the team’s next six games are in conference, wrapping up with a rematch against New Richmond.

The Warriors will honor Schock, Stephen Voto, Tyler Sweeney and Zac Mallon on Senior Night, Monday, Feb. 16 against Indian Hill.