Waynesville, Anna extend playoff journeys
Waynesville High School girls basketball coach Tim Gabbard likes to call Springfield his team’s “home away from home.”
The Spartans have advanced to the Division III district tournament five of the last six years and often find a way to win, despite not playing their best basketball, he said.
“We’re familiar with it,” Gabbard said. “We just find a way to win.”
They’ll return to Springfield next week for the D-III regional semifinals. The Spartans overcame a nine-point halftime deficit to beat Cincinnati Mariemont 33-29 in a D-III district final Saturday afternoon to advance to the regional semifinals for the third time in the last four seasons.
“We did the same thing (in the district semifinal)
against West Liberty,” Gabbard said. “We were down six or seven in the first half and outscored them 18-8 in the second half to beat them.
“It’s just the way we play for some reason, I don’t know why. It gives me gray hairs. We handled the ball
well and we put in our quick team to press and that helps a lot.”
Junior Isabella Cassoni scored a game-high 21 points as the Spartans (16-7) won their fifth straight game.
“We pulled it out,” Cassoni said. “We had a rough first half, but we kept pushing and we pulled out the win.”
The Warriors led 7-6 after the first quarter. They went on a 10-2 run in the second quarter, capped by a 3-pointer by Ally Frye to give Mariemont a 17-8 lead at the half.
In the second half, the Spartans turned up the pressure defensively, capping a 15-3 run on a steal and layup by Cassoni to take a 23-20 lead with less than six minutes remaining.
“We kind of had a rough shooting day, but I knew I had to step up and be a leader,” Cassoni said.
Cassoni scored 11 points in the fourth quarter, making 4-of-5 free throws.
“Her quickness and ball handling are so good,” Gabbard said. “Sometimes she’s too quick. She had a great game scoring-wise, thank goodness, because no one else was hitting.
:I think I looked up there once and she had 20 and we had 26.”
Mariemont cut the lead to 32-29 on a 3-pointer by sophomore Kendall Spreen with less than a minute remaining. The Spartans turned the ball over on their next possession, but the Warriors weren’t able to capitalize. Waynesville senior Leah Butterbaugh hit a free throw down the stretch to seal the victory.
Waynesville advanced to play Worthington Christian at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in a D-III regional semifinal at Springfield. Gabbard doesn’t know much about his team’s next opponent, but that’s typical for this time of year, he said.
“We don’t look ahead,” Gabbard said. “We try not to do that, we’re a little superstitious. Obviously, they’re good.”
Anna 40, Williamsburg 20: The Rockets held the Wildcats to six points in the second half to advance to play Purcell Marian in a D-III regional semifinal at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Springfield.
Junior Breann Reaman (16 points) and senior Ella Doseck (14 points) combined for 30 of the team’s 40 points. Anna improved to 18-7 overall.
Division II
Carroll 53, Summit Country Day 31: The Patriots (18-4) outscored the Silver Knights 32-18 in the second half Friday night at Mason High School to advance to the D-II regional semifinals for the third straight season.
The Patriots play Valley View at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Springfield.
Valley View 62, Trotwood-Madison 50: The Spartans (19-5) advanced to the regional semifinals for the third straight season.
Carroll beat Valley View 57-19 in a regional semifinal last season.
On March 4, 2012, senior guard William Buford came off a screen and hit a sweet, sweet jumper from the top of the key with one second showing on the clock. His shot lifted Ohio State to a 72-70 victory over Michigan State in East Lansing.
It gave Ohio State (and, by the way, Michigan) a share of the Big Ten regular-season title. It gobsmacked Dray- mond Green in what was his final home game in Sparty green-and-white.
And that, ladies and gentle- men, was the last time Ohio State won a men’s basketball game at the Breslin Center.
Oh, they came close Thursday. Ohio State fans will no doubt assign blame to the referees, who ate their whis- tles when Duane Washington Jr. was hacked and E.J. Liddell was mugged in the final seconds of a 71-67 loss. These non-calls came on the heels of a truly strange call in the first half, including the rubbing out of a Washing
ton 3-pointer, upon further review. Who supplied the replays to the refs? Toronto? What were they looking at?
It certainly looked like one of the zebras has some kind of vendetta against OSU coach Chris Holtmann, who was ultimately ejected. Yet, when you get down to it, the officiating was brutal on both sides. If Holtmann didn’t get bounced, then Tom Izzo would have. (That may be why Izzo made sure to sprint over and shake Holt
mann’s hand as Holtmann was being ordered off the court. Izzo knew it.)
Social media roiled with the bile of Buckeyes fans as ESPN cut to SportsCenter. The bile was still bubbling Friday morning. It’s understandable. It has been a tough week for No. 4 Ohio State, which lost an epic battle with No. 3 Michigan in Columbus on Sunday before it went on to the Bates Motel Breslin Center and got knocked off by unranked Michigan State.
For the first time this season, Holtmann’s charges have lost two in a row. Worse, they had to eat a double Michigan veggie burger, with “veggie” serving as a euphemism here. It’s tough to swallow. It feels ulcerous.
In the bigger picture, though, it’s not all bad. Here’s some perspective from Bob Baptist, who is enjoying his sixth year of retirement after 39 years at The Dispatch — the last 18 of which were spent on the Buckeyes basketball beat.
“This is probably the best (OSU) team since 2012, or maybe 2013,” Baptist said from his armchair Friday morning. “This team has improved markedly at guard since Washington stopped making (unforced errors) about a month ago, which is important. Nice team. Very balanced.”
These Buckeyes are not in the strata of No. 1 Gonzaga, or No. 2 Baylor — or No. 3 Michigan, which is on the come. But they’rein the next tier, and probably right at the top of it. They can still aspire to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
T hey have some new issues. They missed the indefatigable spirit of senior forward Kyle Young (concus- sion) down the stretch Thursday. They have to adjust to how teams are defending sharpshooter Justin Ahrens, who is being face-guarded to submission. They have length issues when they run up aga i nst players such as Hunter Dickinson, the 7-foot-2 center who has pushed Michigan to another level.
Yet, with a good draw, these Buckeyes can go deep. They are capable.
They play some beautiful basketball. And when they score in bunches and carry a lead, they can kill teams with their free-throw shoot- ing down the stretch. (Case study: The 2014 UConn Huskies shot 87.8% from the freethrow line in the tournament and were 10 for 10 in their victory over Kentucky in the championship game.)
In fact, the 2020-21 Buckeyes are historically good. If one uses the AP poll — the gold standard since its inception, in 1949 — as a measuring stick, then they have a chance to be among the top 10 teams in program history. Which dates to 1898.
Between 2007 and 2014, Thad Matta had three teams ranked in the top five in final AP polls, which are released at the end of the regular season. Randy Ayers had two in the early 1990s, teams led by Jim Jackson.
Fred Taylor had four in the early 1960s, when Jerry Lucas led a bunch of future pros who won one national title in three trips to the NCAA finals. Tippy Dye had a No. 2 team in 1950. Harold Olsen’s 1939 team lost to Oregon in the 1939 championship game.
Holtmann’s current Buckeyes are in that mix, somewhere. Pretty good team. Enjoy.