North Ridgeville eliminated in physical D-I district semifinal

North Ridgeville came ready to play for its district semifinal as the No. 10 seed in the district, paired up with a formidable No. 3 Garfield Heights on March 1 at Copley.

From the jump, the referees let the game play out as a physical and fast-paced flow ensued. However, Garfield Heights had a little extra edge as the Bulldogs pulled away from the Rangers in the second quarter to eventually take a 63-40 victory and end North Ridgeville’s season.

Garfield Heights will face the winner of Brunswick and Cleveland Heights on March 4 for the district title.

“That’s just a really, really good team,” North Ridgeville coach Ben Chase said. “That’s the best onball defensive team we’ve seen all year. When Jake (Boynar), Collin (Jones) and (Griffin Turay) struggle to gain advantages off the dribble, you know you’re facing a pretty elite defensive team and that’s what we saw tonight. We had a really tough shooting night, which was a huge thing that we needed tonight and we didn’t get that, but super proud of our guys.”

It seemed that North Ridgeville would have a little momentum going into the second half, with Griffin Turay knocking down a 3 to beat the buzzer with pressure in his face by the Garfield Heights defense, cutting the deficit down to 30-18. Turay finished the game leading the Rangers with 17 points in North Ridgeville’s first district game since 2016.

“I think we got a little nervous to start the game,” Turay said. “It’s a playoff game. We haven’t been to district in a while. This group doesn’t have a ton of experience, but I think we gave it our all tonight.”

However, North Ridgeville struggled to get any offense going that would put a dent into the secondhalf scoring, with Garfield Heights putting up a 16-11 advantage to further widen the gap at the end of the third quarter.

“We went man on defense because we started down 12 to start the second half,” Turay explained when viewing how the Bulldogs pulled away. “They’re really athletic and hard to stay in front of in man. I think they’ve got some advantages off of us because we were trying to get back the lead that we lost, and that was pretty much it.”

With a younger Rangers squad, senior Jake Boynar saw a number of players grow and believes they’ll be better for it when they return next season.

For a team that put up the most wins for a North Ridgeville squad since 2009 and less deep playoff experience, North Ridgeville senior Jake Boynar believes the 2022-23 rendition set the tone going forward.