×

Canton boys defeat Montgomery in District 4 Class AA quarterfinals

Canton’s season was hanging in the balance. Montgomery had cut a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit to six in the blink of an eye with the help of three pointers, one each by Logan Almeida and Rayne Parrish. And with Canton leading scorer all-state forward Isaiah Niemczyk out due to disciplinary reasons, things were all of a sudden getting pretty tight inside Canton Gymnasium.

Enter Caiden Williams.

Williams scored 16 points in the fourth quarter, including 14 in a span of 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and Canton won, 64-46, in the District 4 Class AA quarterfinals Wednesday evening. They will play rivals Wyalusing on Saturday at 1 p.m. in the semifinals.

“(After Montgomery’s back-to-back 3s) I just knew we needed to take a breath and calm down and get back to what we were doing before. I knew we had to get buckled down and get back into it,” Williams said. ” I was looking for anything that I could get me points, just any spots in their defense I could attack.”

That’s what he did. The 6-foot, 2-inch senior center simply refused to let his career end and scored in a variety of ways down the stretch. He hit two clutch foul shots when the Red Raiders had all the momentum with 6:02 remaining to put the Warriors back up nine. He followed that with a nifty post move for a layup, then scored on a putback and the Warriors led 52-39 with 4:47 remaining. The dagger came a possession later when he caught a pass on the right wing and nobody came out to guard him. Williams calmly rose to shoot and it hit nothing but net, putting Canton up 16 with inside three to play and sending the crowd into a frenzy. For good measure, the next time down the floor, he dribbled into the lane with his left, spun back to his right, banked it in through a foul and capped it off with a made free throw, and the game was now a mere formality.

“Our number one thing we wrote on the board was we had to work inside out. When it came crunch time the boys knew that they had to get him the ball,” Canton coach Brock Kitchen said. “Caiden had the best game he’s had all year.”

It wasn’t just Williams that stepped up for the Warriors. Junior Weston Bellows scored a career-high 21. Bellows, who doubles as a star on both sides of the ball for the Canton state semifinalist football team, was too quick and strong for Montgomery to handle in transition, and his ball handling led to layups for himself and others down the stretch when Montgomery had to press.

“I’ve been working all week waking up in the morning trying to work on my ball handling and my shooting because I knew we were gonna be missing that scoring for games like this. And I was lucky enough to be able to step up,” Bellows said.

Role players like Connor Foust, Gavin Morse, Kyle Kapicok and Austin Allen among others chipped in with big minutes and starting point guard Cooper Kitchen was his normal steady self with 10 points.

Canton got off to a fast start and led 11-0 on the back of five from Bellows and four from Williams. Montgomery, led by star guard Logan Almeida, would not quit and slowly chipped away at that early gut-punch all half long, and got the last six points of the half, capped off by a Gavin Moore steal and layup as time expired to bring the Red Raiders to within six at 24-18 heading to the third quarter as Almeida led the way with 13 points.

Almedia, a senior 1,000-point scorer who scored 24 in his final game as a Red Raider, helped turn around a dormant program that won three games in three years from 2017-2019 before making the playoffs the last two years.

“Logan has put our basketball program on the map. It didn’t exist before he came. So what he’s done for the program is great. I just told him and I told all the seniors that Montgomery was a laughing joke at basketball prior to me coming and Logan stepping up so I’m happy as hell with what he’s done for the program,” Montgomery coach Junior Parrish said. “He gets up at five in the morning and goes to work and then goes to school. He goes to weights. We’ll have basketball practice and he gets home at nine o’clock at night and goes to bed. He’s just a different breed. He’s the all-American kid,”

The beginning of the third quarter was back and forth for a while, before back-to-back threes by Kitchen and Bellows ballooned the Canton lead to 38-22 in a flash. Montgomery closed strong, though, and cut it to 10 on a Maurice Walters basket with under a minute left in the frame. But, Williams scored in the paint as the clock ran out in the corner, foreshadowing his monster fourth quarter that put Canton across the finish line.

Canton will look to beat Wyalusing, a team they fought with for the NTL small-school title with all year long and split with in the regular season. Class AA is the only classification in District 4 to only get two state berths. Coupled with the fact that Canton, who lost a game two years ago in triple overtime to go to states, is looking for their first state berth ever, and a lot is on the line Saturday afternoon.

“It will be a great matchup. We split this year and this time it will be on a neutral court,” Kitchen said. “(Wyalusing coach) Brett Keyes is a great coach and always has his team ready to play.”

MONTGOMERY (46)

Rayne Parrish 1 0-0 3, Logan Almeida 9 4-6 24, Jacob Utter 0 0-2 0, Gavin moore 2 1-2 5, Maurice Walters 3 0-0 7, Noah Gearhart 0 1-2 1, Colton Hans 1 0-2 3, Austin Kuhn 1 1-2 3. Totals 17 7-16 46.

CANTON (64)

Weston Bellows 9 0-0 21, Austin Allen 1 2-3 5, Cooper Kitchen 3 2-2 10, Conner Foust 0 0-0 0, Gavin Morse 0 0-0 0, Kyle Kapichok 0 0-0 0, Caiden Williams 12 3-5 28. Totals 25 7-10 65.

Montgomery 5 12 13 16 — 46

Canton 11 13 18 22 — 64

3-point goals: Montgomery 5 (Almeida 2, Parrish 1, Walter 1, Kuhn 1), Canton 7 (Bellows 3, Kitchen 2, Williams 1, Allen 1).

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today