His coaches, teammates and friends call him "Biggish."
Friday night, Justin Clemens lived up to his nickname, as he scored a career-high 25 points to help lead Warsaw's varsity boys basketball team to a 72-60 win over the visiting Rochester Zebras."Biggish was big," said Warsaw coach Doug Ogle, whose team improved to 5-0 on the season, while Class 2A No. 7 Rochester fell to 3-1. "I thought Justin Clemens played an inspired game tonight. I'm just really happy for him."
With senior Ryne Robinson out of the lineup for disciplinary reasons, Clemens was the perfect compliment to standout sophomore point guard Nic Moore, who finished with 27 points, 10 rebounds and five assists.
Rochester simply had no answer for the bulky 6-foot-3 Clemens, who finished the game 11 of 16 from the field.
"Their size hurt us," Rochester coach Rob Malchow said of Warsaw. "We knew we had to use our quickness, and they hurt us with their inside play."
Clemens came into Friday night's game averaging six points per contest.
"Our focus all week was to get the ball inside," said Clemens. "The coaches told us Rochester couldn't guard us inside. It felt really good to play that well. Against Huntington North (last Saturday) I only had two points and I kind of struggled. It felt good to have a breakout game."
The Tigers also got nine points and seven rebounds out of junior Andy Conrad, who found his way into the starting lineup in the absence of Robinson. Senior Chase Byerly finished with six points and eight rebounds for Warsaw, while senior Taylor Long and junior Zack Linky scored three and two points, respectively.
In improving to 5-0 for the first time since 1998, the Tigers made good on 20 of 22 free throws and outrebounded the Zebras 42-23.
"Our rebounding was very good tonight," said Ogle. "We rebounded almost 60 percent of our misses. Nic had 10 rebounds, Chase had eight Andy had seven, Justin had six. Rebounding the ball was big for us tonight."
The Tigers scored 19 second-chance points in the win, a product of their 15 offensive rebounds, while the Zebras scored six second-chance points.
What kept Rochester in the game was their All-State guard, 6-1 senior Bruce Grimm Jr.
Though he struggled shooting the ball at times Friday night, the East Tennesee State-bound Grimm poured in a game-high 31 points.
"We knew Bruce Grimm is tremendous player," said Ogle. "Our gameplan, though, was not designed to stop him. I told our players that if Grimm scores 28 points, we probably win. We didn't want him to make Evan Hoff, Brody Schoen and Nate Basham better."
Schoen finished with nine points for the Zebras, while Hoff chipped in with eight points and Basham scored three points.
Grimm, who was 11 of 30 from the field overall and 3 of 13 from three-point range, scored 15 points in the first half and 16 in the second half.
Warsaw led 14-9 after one quarter of play and 33-27 at halftime.
A basket by Moore gave the Tigers a 50-36 lead, their biggest advantage of the game, late in the third quarter.
Rochester used an 11-2 run in the fourth quarter to cut the deficit to three, 58-55, with 3:37 to play.
The Tigers then got a pair of free throws from Byerly and a clutch three-pointer from Long, pushing the lead back to eight with 2:24 remaining.
"We made some plays, we just couldn't get over the hump," said Malchow.
The Tigers' 12-point win avenged a 73-70 loss in three overtimes at Rochester last year.
It also kept Warsaw's momentum going heading into tonight's highly-anticipated home game with Penn, a team now led by former Warsaw coach Al Rhodes.
"To beat a team like Rochester without our third-leading scorer (Robinson, 11 ppg) says a lot about our team," said Ogle. "Now we'll turn our attention to the Penn Kingsmen."
