The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Plenty of hardwood action in the area
In boys action Jan. 26, Lake Catholic handles rival NDCL, Mentor tops Strongsville, West Geauga topped Chagrin Falls in a close one, and Geneva knocks off Perry.
Two things fans can always count on when attending a Chagrin Falls-West Geauga matchup besides a packed house: The two rivals will get after it with a fierce determination to beat the other, and the outcome won’t be decided until the final play.
The teams’ Jan. 26 meeting was more of the same.
The host Wolverines couldn’t get over the hump for the first three quarters and trailed by 10 going into the fourth. In that final frame, they turned up the pressure defensively and forced eight Tigers turnovers, took the lead for the first time in the final two minutes, and forced one more turnover on the game’s final play to pull out a 53-51 victory for a season sweep of their neighborhood rivals.
West Geauga, which defeated Chagrin Falls, 4948, on Jan. 2, held onto a tie with Beachwood for first place in the CVC Chagrin at 8-2, and now stands at 12-3 overall. Chagrin Falls, which fell to 7-4 in the league and 9-5 overall, remains in third place.
Chagrin Falls led, 43-33, entering the fourth quarter, but the Wolverines applied a full-court press that began to pay dividends, and senior Jax Shenkel provided late-game heroics at both ends of the court.
Shenkel scored eight of his game-high 17 points in the fourth quarter and made the winning play at the end. With 11 seconds left on the clock and Chagrin Falls looking to set up a play to score the tying basket, Shenkel came up with a steal with just a couple seconds left and alertly fired the ball all the way down the court to ensure a win for his team.
“I just knew that time was running down, and I knew that even if the ball went out of bounds that they would have to go the whole length of the court,” Shenkel said. “It was just a smart play that came into my head. We just kept fighting (tonight). We knew it was going to be a grind. They’re well-coached.”
West G, which trailed for 30 of the game’s 32 minutes, chipped away at its deficit in the fourth quarter. A bucket by Shenkel and 3-pointer by Josh Irwin made it a fivepoint game. A triple later in the frame by Caleb Ramey cut it to 45-41, and a pair of layups by Shenkel around a Tiger turnover made it 4948 with 3:33 left to play.
After Nico Morgano tied the game with a free throw with 2:06 left, Ramey scored to give the Wolverines their first lead of the game with 1:49 remaining. Jenson Yonker scored for Chagrin Falls to tie it back up, but Shenkel sank two from the line and followed up with the gamewinning steal.
“We made a lineup adjustment. We wanted four guards in there at the end,” West G coach Jeff Javorek said. “We needed to turn up the pressure, needed a full-court press, go for traps and just speed them up. We were able to pressure them, turn them over and speed them up, and score what we needed to score in the second half to win.”
Shenkel, also the quarterback for the West G football team, provided the necessary senior leadership in the clutch.
“He’s our bulldog,” Javorek said of Shenkel. “He does everything inside, he (gets) offensive rebounds and and-ones. Every game he gets major and-ones and he had a big one tonight. He’s a scrapper, he’s always attacking, and he really came through for us in the end.”
For three quarters, it seemed Chagrin Falls would cruise to victory. The Tigers grabbed an early 9-3 lead, dominated the boards in the first half, and seemed to have an answer every time West G hit a big shot. Chagrin Falls held a 31-24 lead at the half, but shot just 33 percent from the field in the second half (7 of 21) and didn’t seize the opportunity to put the game out of reach, due at least in part to the pressure of the Wolverines.
“We didn’t handle the press very well in the fourth quarter,” Chagrin Falls coach Dave Bargar said. “A lot of that I thought was on us not being in the right position. I have to do a better job of making sure these guys know what to expect in certain situations. This was another one of these games where we had a chance to salt it away and didn’t do it.”
Yonker led the Tigers with 12 points. Adam Bencko added 11, and Will DiFiore chipped in with 10. Yonker and Nick DiFiore each had five rebounds.
Irwin, Mark Sexton and Carmen Calo each scored 10 points for the Wolverines, and Irwin added eight rebounds and a pair of assists. West Geauga will travel to Geneva on Jan. 30, but in the meantime will relish a season sweep.
“It’s huge — I can’t remember the last time we swept them,” Javorek, a West Geauga graduate, said. “Last year we beat them here for the first time in five or six years. When we beat them at their place (on Jan. 2) that was the first time we won there in five or six years.
“It’s probably been 7-10 years since we swept them. It’s a big-time rivalry game, a big-time community game, and we were able to get the best of them twice this year.”