Lima Senior’s Sincere Shurelds Horrison dives for a loose ball in front of Shawnee’s Keegan Wilson during Saturday night’s game at Lima Senior. See more high school basketball photos at LimaScores.com.
Richard Parrish | The Lima News
Lima Senior and Shawnee both pushed the ball up and down the court all night, which produced a boys basketball game that was both entertaining and close all the way before Lima Senior pulled away in the final minute and a half for a 69-65 win on Saturday night at Senior High.
The Spartans (10-4) were behind only once in the game, when Austin Miller’s 3-pointer gave Shawnee a 44-43 lead in the first minute of the second half.
But there was nothing easy about the win for Lima Senior. Shawnee had the game tied, 58-58, when Brady Gabes hit a 3-pointer with five minutes to play. And it was a one-point game, 63-62, with 1:30 left on the clock.
“I was happy to get a win. Shawnee brought everything, including the kitchen sink, to try to knock us off. They played a fantastic game. You have to tip your hat to how Coach Triplett had his guys ready to go,” Lima Senior coach Quincey Simpson said.
“Our guys played a little tight, a little fatigued because of all the games we’ve played in the last 10 days, but the last minute and a half we sat down and guarded the ball, got some key rebounds, played fast, executed well and I thought that was the difference,” he said.
Brandon Moore led Lima Senior with 14 points. Jagger Hutchins and Amarion Glenn scored 12 points and Isaiah Wilson had 11 points.
Beckett Bertke led Shawnee (7-8) with 18 points and Austin Miller scored 12. Miller picked up his third foul in the first 37 seconds of the second half, went to the bench until the 4:25 mark of that quarter, then got his fourth foul 54 seconds after returning to the game.
Shawnee coach Mark Triplett said, “We want to play up tempo. If you try to sit in a halfcourt set for 45 seconds they just get in your body and you’re going to have live ball turnovers all night. We always say the only way you can beat a team like that is you have to attack them. You’ve got to get them on their heels. You can’t back down to them. I thought our kids battled and competed.
“It was a back and forth game with both teams throwing blows at each other. Both teams responded to all those battles. We came up a few shots short,” he said.
Simpson pointed to a 47-36 loss to Findlay last Friday night as a turning point for the Spartans, who have won five games in a row since that game.
“Findlay helped us. That may sound odd. But losing to Findlay made us all talk to ourselves in the mirror. Losing at Findlay made us all self reflect and self evaluate. The guys came together and told us they would buy into whatever we wanted to do. Ever since then we’ve done a tremendous job of that.”
Lima Senior led 43-41 over Shawnee at halftime after two quarters in which, obviously, no one held the ball other than the final minute of the half when the Spartans ran the clock down to try to get the last shot.
Lima Senior never was behind in the first half after Hutchins hit a 3-pointer on the Spartans’ first possession of the game.
They built a 24-14 late in the first quarter but Shawnee battled back to cut the lead to 24-22 at the end of the quarter.
The story of the first quarter was Bertke scoring 15 points. By halftime he had 17 points after hitting all five of his field goal attempts, including a 3-pointer and hitting 4 of 5 at the free throw line.
Lima Senior got its lead back up to seven points at 38-31 with 3:48 left in the first half but less than a minute later Shawnee had tied the game at 38-38.
Lima Senior shot 64 percent on field goals (19 of 29) and Shawnee also connected on 64 percent of its shots in the first half (14 of 22).
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Reach Jim Naveau at 567-242-0414.
