Every year all Manchester basketball players visit their favorite barber the week of the sectional and walk away with buzzcuts. No exception. Everyone gets his head shaved. It's a team unity thing.

It's also tradition, they told their first-year coach.

Goshert's team just won a conference title last Friday. Coaches are often creatures of habit, and Goshert is no exception.

"My first response was, 'Gee, things are going pretty well right now. I'd hate to change anything,'" he said.

Goshert was smart enough to know he was fighting a losing battle. Those boys weren't about to end their ritual. The hair got buzzed.

Turns out the hair didn't affect their play on the court much anyway. The Squires beat the school they most love to beat, Whitko, 48-46. They opened Tuesday's Columbia City Sectional with the win.

Manchester, 13-8, meets Columbia City on Thursday. Whitko finished 10-11, the first losing season in school history.

Whether the Wildcats wanted it or not, people labeled them a one-man team. Zach Henson scored 24 points per game this season. Nobody else averaged double figures.

The Squires did what few - maybe even none - could do this year.

They shut down Zach Henson.

Henson finished with a season-low six points on 3-of-15 shooting. Everywhere Henson would go, a Squire or two or three was sure to follow. Eric Swan, Scot Croner, whoever. You name the Manchester player, the odds are they covered Henson at one time or another.

"A lot of credit goes to their defense," Whitko coach Dave Henson said. "Everywhere he went, they were shadowing him. When he got the ball, they were trapping him. They were two-teaming him and jumping at him a lot.

"They had a good game plan, and they executed it."

Even though Henson wasn't scoring, Whitko led late into the second half. Big men Bo Mullins and Jeremiah Laws benefited from the Henson defense.

Laws, a reserve, led Whitko with 14 points. He averaged 4.1 points per game this season. Mullins added 11.

Laws scored six in the second quarter and helped give Whitko a 25-21 halftime lead, but he sat on the bench to start the second half.

"They had some players come through for them that maybe haven't been their big scorers all year long," Goshert said.

Laws' biggest basket came at the buzzer to end the third quarter, as he made an alley oop layup on a Mullins' pass to give Whitko the 38-37 lead.

Four free throws by Mullins sandwiched around a Swan layup put Whitko up 42-39 with 6:30 left in the last quarter. Manchester went on a little 4-0 run to take a 43-42 lead.

Then the Squires made the biggest play of the game.

With 3:48 left, Manchester senior guard Brandon Reimer stripped the ball away from Chad Schipper at halfcourt.

Reimer turned the steal into a layup. He scored only two points against Whitko, but his two gave Manchester the biggest lift of the evening. The Squires went up 45-42, and their fans roared their approval.

Reimer's play drew the loudest cheers of the evening. The Squires had the momentum. Their fans were darned if they were going to give it up.

They didn't. Whitko never led again.

"The big play of the game was Brandon Reimer getting that steal and conversion," Goshert said. "That was big-time. That gave us the opportunity to change defenses and get into a defense where we could handle them better."

The Squires chased Whitko in the third quarter. That forced them to put pressure on Whitko by playing an aggressive man-to-man defense. When they went ahead - when they were in control - they were able to play their defense of choice, the matchup zone.

The Wildcats still had their chances. Swan carried the ball with 34 seconds left and Manchester holding a 48-46 lead.

Whitko had the ball the rest of the game. One bucket in 34 seconds. That's all the Wildcats needed.

But they frittered their chances away. Their last one came when Manchester deflected the ball out of bounds with 1.6 seconds left. Timeout was called.

The Wildcats had trouble getting the ball in bounds, and they finally settled for a cross-court pass to Henson over in the corner near the baseline. Henson tossed up an off-balance three-pointer.

Sometimes they go in.

Henson's didn't.

"We were going to try to let Zach penetrate," Coach Henson said of the last play. "We were having two guys spot up. If the three was there, I told them we'll take the three.

"We'd take whatever was available."

Even though Henson didn't score much, for three quarters he did a good job of getting the ball to open men like Mullins and Laws. Then he tried to carry the team in the fourth quarter and forced some shots.

It didn't work.

"Zach struggled," Coach Henson said of his son. "They defended him well. Usually he excels in the fourth quarter. He wasn't able to do it tonight."

Nope. He made 1 of 6 shots in the last quarter.

"We didn't want let him to have free looks," Goshert said. "He's too good. We wanted him to have to work very hard for everything."

Senior forward Jake Peden, who made several key baskets to keep the Squires close in the third quarter, led Manchester with 12 points.

Neither team could hit perimeter shots, so most the big men did most of the scoring inside. Each hit just 1 of 8 three-pointers. No guard on either team scored more than six.

The Squire players and Coach Goshert were glad to just escape with the win. He has only two seniors on the roster, so his players felt like they just stepped out of a pressure cooker.

"These kids made a bunch of comments of how they hadn't been in this kind of situation before, that they almost couldn't make themselves move," Goshert said.

"That's experience that they now have."

Their buzzcuts continued.

Their winning continues.

Now comes Columbia City. [[In-content Ad]]