The historic 2022 season for the East Knox Bulldogs basketball team came to an end at the hands of Madison Tri-Village, 60-38, in the semifinal round of the Division 4 regionals March 8.
Even another second-half scoring display by leading scorer Shane Knepp couldn’t stop the Patriots from recording their 14th straight win and moving on to the regional finals against the Botkins Trojans (25-2), who advanced with a 60-46 win over Springfield Catholic Central.
East Knox, which came into the game as a first-time district champion after a 51-36 victory over Grove City Christian, had ridden Knepp’s’ second-half heroics – 21 second-half points in two consecutive games – but ran into a Tri-Village buzz saw that even Knepp’s scoring couldn’t override. The Bulldogs entered the game at 19-7 and an average score of 48 points scored vs. 40 against. But the Patriots, now 23-4, had limited their opponents to 38 points per game while scoring an average of 72 themselves. This game played into that scenario as the Patriots never trailed, going wire-to-wire behind 32 points from 6-foot-5 senior Layne Sarver.
Tri-Village swarmed, double-teamed and pressed Knepp in the first, and as Sarver scored 13, the Patriots took a 16-3 lead after one and never looked back. Tri-Village put up 16 again in the second and swelled the lead to 32-12 at halftime. Knepp, held to one point in the first, scored eight of the Bulldogs’ nine second-quarter tallies.
In the third, the Bulldogs found their scoring touch with 14 points, but the Patriots hit 16 for the third straight quarter to take a 48-26 lead into the fourth. Sam Whitney hit for six and Knepp and Ethan Rine each scored four for EK in the third. Josh Scantland put in nine of his 13 game points in the third for Tri-Village, and Sarver added five to run his total to 23 at that point.
Knepp shook loose from the Pats' suffocating defense and gave it his second-half all in the fourth, hitting four deuces, and the teams each scored 12 in the final stanza (nine more by Sarver), but the Pats were up by as many as 26 in the second half before settling for a 22-point victory.
KMAC first-team selection and leading scorer Knepp finished with 21, and Rine was next in Bulldogs’ scoring with six.
