Jim Walker
jim.walker@irontontribune.com

When you are a child, your parents teach you to never play with fire.
The Rose Hill Royals didn’t want to but they played against the St. Joseph Flyers on Friday and Ryan Payne was on fire as he sparked a 77-42 win in the semifinals of the St. Joseph Holiday Tournament.
Payne scored 23 points and was 4-of-5 from 3-point range in the first quarter and had five for the game.
“Ryan was hot as can be in the first half. He didn’t miss too many shots,” said Flyers’ coach Chris Barnes.
“We needed that because we were kind of looking ahead to (Saturday) and we let up, but we played better defense in the second half. We’ll need to play well the entire game (Saturday).”
The Flyers (9-0) will face unbeaten Huntington St. Joe (5-0) who beat Portsmouth Notre Dame 68-41 to set up the 4 p.m. title game on Saturday.
The girls’ consolation game is at 10 a.m. followed by the girls’ championship game at noon between St. Joseph and Belpre.
The boys’ consolation game is at 2 p.m. between Notre Dame and Rose Hill.
Jimmy Mahlmeister scored 15 points while J.C. Damron scored 12 points and Zach Roach had 10.
All three hit 3-pointers.
Steven Barker had a game-high 25 points to lead Rose Hill (2-8).
“Give Rose Hill credit. They played hard. They didn’t have their best shooter, but I never expected Barker to score like he did,” said Barnes.
Payne hit 4-of-5 shots from behind the arc in the first quarter including one at the buzzer that gave the Flyers at 22-13 lead. Barker scored 9 for the Royals.
Jackson Rowe came off the bench to hit a pair of 3-pointers in the second quarter, Payne and Jared Johnson hit treys and Mahlmeister got 4 points as St. Joseph went up 38-23 at the half.
Barker scored 7 of Rose Hill’s 10 points in the quarter.
Roach took over and scored 7 points in the third quarter as the Flyers took a 55-32 lead. Rose Hill didn’t make its first basket of the half until 2:08 was left in the quarter.
Damron scored 6 points including a trifecta and Michael Mahlmeiser got 5 points as seven different players scoring in the fourth quarter for the Flyers.
Rose Hill 13 10 9 10 = 42
St. Joseph 22 16 17 22 = 77
ROSE HILL (2-8): Steven Barker 6 3 4-5 25, Kaison Coleman 2 0 1-4 5, Tate Sawyers 1 0 0-1 2, Chase Pennington 0 0 0-0 0, Trey Phelps 0 1 2-2 5, Seth Wirzfeld 0 1 0-0 3, John VanHoose 0 0 0-0 0, Ian Justice 1 0 0-0 2, Luke Pennington 0 0 0-0 0, Jeremy Crawford 0 0 0-0 0. Totals: 10 5 7-12 42. Fouls: 13. Fouled out: None.
ST. JOSEPH (9-0): Jackson Rowe 0 2 0-0 6, Matthew Sheridan 0 0 1-2 1, Zach Roach 3 1 1-1 10, Andrew White 0 0 0-0 0, Ryan Payne 3 5 2-2 23, J.C. Damron 3 1 3-3 12, Jared Johnson 0 1 0-0 3, Michael Mahlmeister 2 0 1-2 5, Jimmy Mahlmeister 5 1 2-4 15, Max Weber 0 0 0-0 0, Jacob Salisbury 1 0 0-0 2, Elijah Rowe 0 0 0-0 0. Totals: 19 9 10-14 77. Fouls: 16. Fouled out: None.