The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
VASJ rallies for thrilling victory
Vikings top NCL rival Bengals, will face Buchtel for spot in Columbus
CANTON » Being down 11 late in the fourth quarter of a regional semifinal might make some teams flinch.
Villa Angela-St. Joseph? Hardly.
It’s simply a time to flex some fortitude, as the Vikings have so many times over the years when the stage was presented and a moment for mettle was required.
VASJ closed on an 18-3 run to rally for a 66-62 D-II regional semifinal victory over Benedictine at the Canton Civic Center.
The Vikings (18-8) will take on Akron Buchtel in a D-II regional final at 6:15 p.m. March 15.
The bass from the between-game music bumped into the basement locker rooms at the Civic Center, but probably not quite as much as the palpitations from a VASJ perspective after a thrilling comeback display.
“I think if we played 10 times, we’d probably win five and they’d probably win five,” Vikings coach Babe Kwasniak said. “It’s about as well evenly matched teams as you’re ever going to see.
“But we’ve been winning games with that all year. We’ve got 18 wins, and that’s our 12th game that we won by one possession. You can’t make this up. These kids, they’re a microcosm of the neighborhood, man. People have been saying our school is going to die. People have been saying they’re going to die all year, and they just refused to go away. You have a bunch of kids who have just been there before.”
The Bengals (15-11) opened a 59-48 advantage after a 3-pointer by Eric Buckner and a 3 by B.J. Busbee, of a Buckner assist, with 4 minutes, 21 seconds remaining.
VASJ responded with consecutive 3s by Graham Koppelman and Jordan Calhoun to pull within 5954.
The Vikings got a big energy boost with 2:47 remaining, when Calhoun lobbed for Latrace Jackson, who went up to corral the pass with his left hand and hammer home a dunk to pull VASJ within 59-56. Kwasniak said after the game Jackson’s setplay dunk was the mastermind of Calhoun, the son of Youngstown State coach Jerrod Calhoun.
“Oh, that got us all going,” Hameed said of Jackson’s dunk. “It got our energy up, what we needed to bring it back.”
Busbee connected on a pair of free throws to open a 61-56 cushion, but the Vikings scored the next eight points to take the lead for good.
Khalil Mitcham’s twohanded dunk with 48 seconds to go gave VASJ a 6261 lead, and on their next trip down the floor, the Vikings for a Jason Priah bucket, assisted by Hameed, to go up, 64-61.
Davin Zeigler’s free throw for the Bengals with eight seconds left made it a two-point game at 64-62. But Hameed delivered two clutch free throws with 7.2 seconds remaining for the final margin.
Hameed, the Vikings’ standout sophomore guard, was 10-for-11 from the line, all in the second half, and finished with 19 points and five assists.
“We’ve got to keep fighting one game at a time and keep fighting for each other,” Hameed said.
“We’ve been here. We know what it’s like, what it is to go through. We can control the runs, the crowd, everything. We just control it.”
Benedictine had a brilliant run bridging the third and fourth quarters to open the aforementioned 11-point lead.
Andy Barba gave the Bengals their first lead since 11-8 in the opening quarter on a 3 for a 38-36 advantage late in the third. Benedictine scored seven straight, including a steal by reserve Charles Abston and feed in transition for Jashun Cobb, to go up, 48-40.
Much to the lament of the Bengals’ faithful and Coach Rob Stircula, as Benedictine sought its fifth eliteeight berth since 2007, the positive wave didn’t last.
“We underachieved, I thought,” Stircula said when asked to assess the campaign as a whole. “Yeah, we faced a lot of adversity. Guys out. Mono. We had guys out with concussions. I went out. Our JV coach went out. Freshman coach went out. I mean, it’s the most adversity I’ve ever had a team face.
“And we got it together the last month of the season. We started to focus, but we never got to that place where we kept rolling.”
Busbee had 14 points on 4-for-7 shooting for the Bengals, and Cobb had 12 points and four assists. Zeigler capped his standout career with 11 points, three rebounds and four assists.
Priah had a fine allaround game with 16 points, nine rebounds and three assists for the Vikings, and Mitcham contributed 12 points, eight rebounds and three assists.
The situation called for mettle, and VASJ found it in reserve.
“Winning and losing has absolutely nothing to do with how much I love this group,” Kwasniak said. “This group is a lot like their coach. I’m not the most stable, emotional guy, and neither are they. They just play with their left ventricles on their sleeve. We just did. We literally just left it all out on the floor.”