On Thursday, Dec. 4, the Centerville boys basketball team hosted longtime rival Northeastern in a matchup of state-ranked teams. A near-capacity crowd finally got an answer to the question raised in 2000 by the Baha Men with their song “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
Centerville head coach Brian Keiser not only let his dogs out, he found out they could follow simple instructions. “I told the kids to be super aggressive on both ends of the floor,” Keiser said in postgame remarks. ”We have to be a little careful with fouls since we have a few rotation players out, but we want to be the aggressor to speed teams up.” Centerville executed the game plan to perfection.
The game was a mismatch from the opening tip. Centerville, using full-court defense to create offense, opened the game on a 9-0 run and pushed its lead to 26-7 by the end of the first quarter.
The second quarter was even worse. The Bulldogs continued their aggressive play, creating turnovers and turning them into points, to outscore the Knights 26-4 in the quarter, expanding their halftime advantage to 52-11 and triggering a running clock in the second half.
The Knights got 11 points from Noah DuVall in the third quarter, but they were still outscored and trailed 69-23 entering the fourth quarter. The Bulldogs eventually won the game by the final score of 82-29.
Shea Hollendonner led the Bulldogs and all game scorers with 28 points. Landyn Keiser scored 12 points and Bryson Brown added 11 points. Noah DuVall led the Knights with 11 points.
Centerville’s coach complimented his opponent. “Northeastern has a great program and a great coaching staff,” Keiser said. “But we have a lot of returning players this year. They beat us a couple of times last year and our kids wanted to make sure that that would not happen again. This is a great win, but we can’t celebrate too long because we will face a huge challenge on Saturday when we play Delta, a team that has been to the semi-state in each of the last three years.”
Northeastern head coach Brent Ross reflected on the game. ”Our motto has always been that adversity builds character,” Ross said. “We will bounce back. The good thing about basketball is we have another game in two days so we won’t dwell on this loss. We will work to improve and get better. We are young and the only way for our kids to get experience is to play.”
The loss broke a Tri-Eastern Conference winning streak of eight games for defending champion Northeastern and was the worst loss for the program in more than 40 years.
Centerville (2-0, 1-0 TEC) 26 26 17 13 82
Northeastern (1-1, 0-1 TEC) 7 4 12 6 29
Centerville (82)
Keith Plyley Jr. 7, Landyn Keiser 12, Ethan Vecera 7, Shea Hollendonner 28, Brown 11, Jace Hollendonner 9, Landen Schlotterbeck 5, Coltyn Keiser 3
Northeastern (29)
Trent Deloney 0, Kaleb Moore 3, Logan Seal 2, Jarrrett Leitner 4, Gavin Platt 0, Luke Wiley 7, Marshall Phillips 0, Brody Ross 0, Luke Durbin 0, DuVall 11, Landen Helms 0, Cooper Cline 2
JV Results: Centerville 67, Northeastern 28
A version of this article appeared in the December 10 2025 print edition of the Western Wayne News.