TODAY’S GAME
Ohio State races out to lead, hangs on for Big Ten tournament win.
From the second INDIANAPOLIS — he walks into a gym, Duane Washington Jr. always sees the rim. This time, he saw it a little more clearly.
A little more than three minutes into Ohio State’s opening game of the Big Ten tournament, the junior guard cut from the 3-point line, took a pass from Kyle Young, cut through the lane and threw down a contested dunk in the paint. Around him, his teammates howled. Above him, the massive scoreboard at Lucas Oil Stadium showed the 6-0 lead for the Buckeyes.
It was the start of a dunk party for Washington and his team
Ohio State vs. Purdue, 2 p.m., Big Ten Network, 1410 mates, who took out two weeks’ worth of frustration by slamming home seven first-half dunks, building an early double-digit lead and fending off No. 13 seed Minnesota (14-15) by a 79-75 score.
Ohio State led 72-60 with 1:38 to play before the Gophers made it a 75-74 game with 8.9 seconds left. E.J. Liddell was fouled with 8.0 left, went to the line and hit two free throws for some breathing room.
With the win, the Buckeyes (198) will face No. 4 seed Purdue at
The Ohio State bench, including forward Zed Key (23) and guard Jansen Davidson Jr. (40), a 2017 Fairmont High School grad, celebrate in the first half against Minnesota at the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis on Thursday.
on improving the offense as a whole.
“We went through a lot of things last year as a team, and we were able to start trending in the right direction and get into the playoffs,” Zinter said. “Then it was over abruptly. So it gave us a chance to reflect. Where could we have been better? What happened? It gave us a chance to look at it objectively. And It was a really cool process.”
Zinter learned Reds batters did some good things but struggled with quality of contact. When they put the ball in play, they hit it into the air too much. He has focused on getting the hitters to swing down through the ball.
The Reds ranked fourth in the league in home runs (90) last season and sixth in strikeouts (534). They tied for the league lead in walks (239) but ranked 13th in on-base percentage (.312).
“We’re still trying to hit the ball very hard and walk and get on base,” Zinter said. “We walked. We had great swing decisions last year. But our guys never scored. We were missing a variety of hits. We didn’t really work in that spectrum of where the high hit probability is. We hit a lot of home runs when we were on, but when we did miss it, we were in the air too much. So we’re trying to bring down that focus a little bit so we open up that spectrum.”
NOTES: The Reds placed Votto on the injured list
Wednesday after he tested positive for COVID-19.
“I think he’s handling it as well as possible,” manager David Bell said. “No surprise there. We’re hopeful just not only for his health but even from a baseball standpoint, he can get back here as quick as he can. He was feeling very good about where he was.”
When Fort Loramie girls basketball coach Carla Siegel makes a substitution, it doesn’t make her nervous.
When her team is missing easy shots and battling nerves in the first quarter of the Division IV state semifinals against Convoy Crestview, it doesn’t make her nervous.
Siegel says she has six or seven starters and isn’t afraid to play any of her top eight at any point. So when the Redskins were leading only 10-9 late in the first quarter … she wasn’t nervous.
But her players were. They were supposed to play in this game last year. When they finished lunch at Culver’s in Marysville on their way to Columbus, they got on the bus. That’s when Siegel told them the state tournament had just been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A lot of the nerves were carried over,” said Fort Loramie senior Kenzie Hoelscher. “On the way here it finally kicked in: ‘We’re playing at
the state tournament.’ But everyone did a really good job of calming down their nerves and finishing out the first half.”
Loramie (28-1) suddenly looked like the top-ranked team in the state they’ve been all season. In the final 58 seconds of the first quarter, Dana Rose hit a 3-pointer, Clara Gephart made a jumper in the lane and Ava Sholtis followed in a missed shot at the buzzer. The lead was
17-9, and by the middle of the second quarter Loramie led 34-14.
Loramie didn’t let up, started making easy shots and difficult ones and defeated Crestview 66-24 Thursday at UD Arena to advance to their first state final since 2015 when they won their second title.
“They’ve heard me say it like 8 million times in their career,” Siegel said. “That top corner, if you hit that, the ball goes in almost 99 percent of the time. I think the nerves were there, and I knew that we would come out of it.”
Loramie will face McDonald (23-2) at 10:45 a.m. Saturday at UD in the state final. McDonald defeated Waterford 57-29 in Thursday’s second semifinal. The Redskins stayed to watch with last year’s missed opportunity still driving them.
“We used that as a fire in our bellies, and that can give us a little bit more determination to go out and finish what we didn’t get to last year,” Hoelscher said.
Rose led Loramie with 22 points, Hoelscher had 12 and Corynn Heitkamp had 10. Sholtis and Colleen Brandewie scored six points apiece off the bench and combined for eight rebounds and seven assists.
“Everybody puts five great players on the floor in the state tournament,” Siegel said. “When you can rely on your bench, it’s an added bonus when you can go eight deep and not lose anything on offense or defense.”
Defense also kickstarted the Redskins and calmed their nerves. They forced 16 turnovers in the first half, 24 for the game and scored 34 points off those turnovers. Crestview made only three of 20 shots in the second half and shot 30.6 % for the game.
“We thought our defense would cause them some problems,” Siegel said. “I wasn’t expecting it to cause that many problems.”
Loramie’s history of success during the past 22 years under Siegel means there are no secrets of what to expect. Crestview coach Mark Gregory ran down the scouting report as he discussed what happened in the game.
“They’re a buzzsaw — they just have so many nice pieces,” he said. “They play so hard, they’re long, they defend well, they move the basketball so well, rebound. And those are the things we knew we had to do. We had to play almost a perfect game to win this today.”
Loramie didn’t have to be perfect. They just had to calm down and do what the scouting report says.