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By Paul Lecker
MarshfieldAreaSports.com
MARSHFIELD – The Marshfield Columbus Catholic boys basketball team looked to be easing its way to a Cloverbelt Conference East Division victory over Neillsville on Thursday night. Suddenly, things changed.
Columbus led 45-25 with 1:27 left in the third period but had to hold off a furious comeback from the Warriors and found a way to pull out a 52-51 win at Columbus Catholic High School.
Tyler Derfus scored 18 points, Travis Pischel added 13 and Paul Selz had 12 as the Dons rebounded from a loss to Colby last Friday to improve to 11-4 overall and 10-2 in the Cloverbelt East. Neillsville falls to 6-8, 6-6 in the Cloverbelt.
Playing without senior starting point guard Jared Boyle, the Dons turned to others to pick up the slack. Brandon Nikolai was thrust into the main ball-handling duties and Derfus, a junior guard, was 7 of 15 from the floor in scoring his career-high.
“It was big shoes to fill, with Boyle out, but I came out and helped out the team get a win,” Derfus said. “That’s all that matters.”
Columbus hit four 3-pointers, two by Derfus, in the first quarter and took a 16-3 lead in the first quarter.
The Dons went 4:40 without scoring in the second quarter, but still held a 26-11 lead at halftime thanks to 3-pointers by Mike Iwanski and Pischel in the final 2 minutes of the quarter.
Columbus started the second half by scoring the first six points to go up by 21 points. Neillsville responded with a 9-0 run only to see the Dons come back and take a 45-25 lead after another Pischel 3-pointer at the 1:27 mark of the quarter.
From there, however, it was all Neillsville.
The Warriors closed the third quarter with seven straight points and finished off a 14-0 run with two free throws by Matt Dux, cutting Columbus’ once huge lead to 45-39 with 4:45 to go.
“We made some turnovers and let them back into the game,” Derfus said. “We knew we had to keep close and win it in the end.”
Iwanski stopped the bleeding momentarily, but the Warriors kept plugging away and eventually cut the deficit to 50-48 on a layup by Danny Opelt with 58 seconds left.
Colubmus turned the ball over for the second straight time and Neillsville had a chance to tie the game, but Tyler Ehlen missed two free throws with 36 seconds left.
After a missed free throw by Columbus, Ehlen missed a 3-pointer with 20 seconds left that could have put Neillsville ahead. Instead, the ball went to the Dons and Nikolai made two free throws to give the Dons a four-point lead. Dux hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to provide the final margin.
Neillsville made just 7 of 17 free throws in the game, 4 of 8 in the fourth quarter.
“Neillsville deserves all the credit for what they did,” Columbus coach Joe Konieczny said. “They kind of went helter-skelter and played harder than us. They forced us into some bad decisions and we continued to make them. I thought we kind of let things snowballed a bit.”
Columbus plays at Spencer on Tuesday.
Dons 52, Warriors 51
Neillsville 3 8 21 19 – 51
Columbus 16 10 19 7 – 52
NEILLSVILLE (48): Ben Streunsee 0-1 0-0 0, Danny Opelt 3-8 0-0 7, Tyler Ehlen 7-18 1-7 17, Ryan Naughton 2-7 1-2 5, Jordan Hauge 1-3 1-2 4, Matt Dux 3-10 3-4 11, Bryce Backaus 0-1 1-2 1, Nick Thoma 3-5 0-0 6. FG: 19-53. FT: 7-17. 3-pointers: 6-24 (Ehlen 2-9, Dux 2-8, Hauge 1-3, Opelt 1-2, Struensee 0-1, Naughton 0-1). Rebounds: 40 (Ehlen 8, Dux 7, Opelt 7). Turnovers: 21. Total fouls: 15. Fouled out: none. Record: 6-8, 6-6 Cloverbelt East.
COLUMBUS (52): Mike Iwanski 2-4 0-1 5, Jordan Derfus 0-1 0-0 0, Travis Pischel 5-11 0-0 13, Brandon Nikolai 1-5 2-2 4, Tyler Derfus 7-15 2-6 18, Paul Selz 4-13 2-3 12, David Cleveland 0-1 0-0 0, Zach Strobel 0-0 0-0 0. FG: 19-50. FT: 6-12. 3-pointers: 8-28 (Pischel 3-6, T. Derfus 2-8, Selz 2-8, Iwanski 1-3, Nikolai 0-3). Rebounds: 26 (Selz 7, T. Derfus 6). Turnovers: 16. Total fouls: 17. Fouled out: none. Record: 11-4, 10-2 Cloverbelt East.