The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Columbia holds off Fairview for victory
The Warriors trimmed the Raiders’ lead to 57-55 with 1:13 remaining, but Columbia made the plays it needed to to win, 63-58.
Fairview pushed Columbia to the limit after trailing in the fourth quarter, but the Raiders’ clamped down and hung on for a 6358 victory on Dec. 8.
While the final score to this one may have appeared as a comfortable win for Columbia, there were tense moments inside Fairview gym.
Trailing by as many as 10 down the stretch, Fairview trimmed the Raiders’ lead to 57-55 with 1:13 left. Going to the free-throw line, opportunity presented itself to the Warriors, but Fairview just couldn’t capitalize as the Warriors missed its last four free throws and went a gut-wrenching 5-for23 from the charity stripe.
“The game plan going in was attack their zone and get in there. We didn’t do that in the first half. We started in the second half to see the dividends,” Fairview Coach Ryan Barry said. “Now when you’re down, the goal is to get to the line. The clock stops, you can score points and crawl back into the game and I think we did a good job executing to get there. The nice thing would have been to finish. But yeah, we’ve got to make our free throws.”
With Fairview missing the opportunity to come back into this one, Columbia got the job done both at
the free-throw line and on defense to close this tough road game out with a conference victory.
“Our kids held their composure. We did our best last weekend, but we came out of that tournament 0-2 and we played two very good teams, played a third very good team tonight and our kids and their kids and our kids know each other,” Columbia Coach Larry Babics said. “Luckily enough, our guys made a few more plays and we had a very good road victory for our first victory of the conference.”
This win could not have been done without the help of Columbia senior Josh Borling. Borling came away with a team-high 24 points and added 12 boards in what the Raiders called a signature win for the program.
“We played really hard and we brought really tough defense,” Borling said. “They came back from 10 points and we just closed it out by playing a great job on defense and at the very end making our free throws.”
Earning the gritty road win was something that Borling said his team will take pride in as conference play starts to open up.
“We just got those key plays at the end and did what we needed to do at the times that we needed to do it,” Borling said.
“It was a great win for our team, even our coach said it was one of the best wins we’ve had in the last five years.”
Knowing what his team was capable of, Babics said the execution of the game plan was essential to the win.
“To go on all the runs and for them to cut it down to two at one point, their guards are just so good and it’s so hard to keep those guys in front of us and Luke (Howes) made so many plays,” Babics said. “You can try and contain those guys, but our guys followed the game plan and they did everything we asked.”