Published on January 21, 2026 10:41 am
Last Updated on January 21, 2026 10:41 am
#5 NORTH CLAY CARDINALS
Coach: Josh Zink
Record at Seeding: 11-6, 2-3 NTC
by DUSTIN WHITE
There might not be a better selling point for the quality of the National Trail Conference than the fact that North Clay High School just received the No. 5 seed in the 90th Annual NTC boys basketball tournament and it wasn’t even a controversial decision on the part of the league’s collective coaches.
North Clay’s overtime loss at home to Altamont the day before the seedings were announced gave Altamont the edge in the final tally … although the possible path to a championship game is exactly the same whether or not you have a 4 or a 5 next to your name on the bracket. Those two will immediately get the chance to put the gloves back on and see who advances to the championship side of the schedule when they meet up in a Tuesday quarterfinal.
Coach Josh Zink and his extremely talented – if not unprecedentedly top-heavy – Cardinals roster came into the season being discussed as quite possibly the team to beat in the NTC with all the experience it had coming back and the graduation losses absorbed by some of the other usual suspects atop the conference standings.
It hasn’t necessarily played out that way so far; conference losses to St. Anthony, Cumberland and Altamont have left North Clay with a very difficult path toward securing a regular season league championship.
Still, a recent win over Casey-Westfield in the snow-delayed championship of the Cumberland Thanksgiving Tournament and a couple gutsy losses to highly regarded Webber Township and top-ranked Lawrenceville (North Clay held a double-digit lead) tell you these Cardinals can play with anyone and it remains unquestionably true that this North Clay squad is more than capable of finding itself playing in front of that packed Saturday night crowd at Altamont High School with a championship trophy at stake.
Zink, coach at his alma mater since the 2017-18 season after a two-season stint back from 2000-02 and now equaling Ron Reed (1992-2000) and Kent Lewis (1974-82) as the longest consecutively-tenured mentors in program history, has four players averaging between 12 and 16 points per game while senior Kade Atwood is always a couple big games away from becoming North Clay’s fifth kid averaging double-figure scoring.
Senior Cody Zimdars leads them all with 15.8 per game, the third straight year he’s been Zink’s most prolific bucket-getter. Zimdars tallied nearly 300 points his freshman campaign before averaging 17.8 and 20.4 per game the next two seasons; the only logical reason to doubt that he might challenge or even eclipse 2,000 career points is the very thing that makes North Clay so dangerous: Zimdars’ classmates Carder Walden (13.9 ppg) and Mason Byers (13.5 ppg) along with junior Lucas Griffy (12.3 ppg) are all so willing and able to fill it up themselves. Every night is about which matchup favors which scorer, not so much about just feeding one or two specific guys.
Zimdars can score however he wants. Three-pointers, slashing to the hoop, mid-range jumpers, drawing contact and hitting foul shots … they’re all in Cody’s toolbox. Walden is a matchup problem who can post you up or bury a triple in your face, while Byers might be pound-for-pound the most athletic player in the league and finds his way to finishing around the rim more than you’d ever think if you just looked at him in street clothes. Griffy would be the best player on a lot of local 1A teams and is somehow the No. 4 scoring option at North Clay.
Zimdars, Walden, Byers, Griffy and Atwood have scored all but 20 of North Clay’s 1,114 points this season and there have been nights when only those five ever saw the floor. Freshman Cooper Lewis comes off the bench most frequently while sophomore Grant Probst is next on that infrequently tested depth chart, all of which is partially a circumstance of junior Lane Wolfe suffering a significant injury during the second game of the year.
Initially thought to be lost for the entire season, there’s some hope we’ll get to see Wolfe again. Word is the North Clay coaching staff would welcome it as Wolfe is capable of serving as a nice facilitator in a lineup full of scoring threats.
It’ll be an upset on paper if North Clay survives the gauntlet that would be Altamont and then most likely top-seeded Cumberland to secure its first-ever championship game berth since joining the NTC a decade ago. You can’t deny it at this point. But don’t be surprised if it comes to pass … the talent is there for the Cardinals to make a run if they can get clicking and make it happen.