OTTAWA – Before LeBron James won NBA championships, he played in four state basketball championships and won three of them.
Twice, the road to those state titles went through a regional championship game against Ottawa-Glandorf in front of huge crowds at the University of Toledo in memorable match-ups in 2002 and 2003.
James will become even more of a legend if he leads the Cleveland Cavaliers to an NBA championship, starting tonight against the Golden State Warriors, to end a 52-year title drought by Cleveland’s professional sports teams.
But he had already been called The Chosen One on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he and his Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary teammates arrived at UT’s Savage Arena for the first of their two games against O-G.
He also arrived with an entourage and body guards who convoyed the budding superstar from Point A to Point B and cleared any real and perceived distractions from his path.
They, of course, couldn’t join James on the court against the biggest obstacles he faced – an Ottawa-Glandorf team that came into the 2002 game with a 24-1 record and one that arrived in 2003 with a 22-3 record.
St. Vincent-St. Mary won the first time, 77-58, with James scoring 21 points. In 2003, the game was tied at halftime before the Irish won 69-59 and James finished with 25 points.
Six months later James was playing in the NBA on his first go-around with the Cavaliers. A year later, led by four-year starter Tim Pollitz and three-year starter Eric Pollitz, the Titans beat St. Vincent-St. Mary in the regional championship game and won the first of the school’s three boys basketball state championships.
While James was surrounded by talented players, including Romeo Travis and Dru Joyce III, who went on to play at the University of Akron, he was the show and the best player ever to play high school basketball in Ohio.
“We did our best. But, man, he was something else,” Eric Pollitz said Wednesday.
“He was huge. He was so big. We’d never seen a high schooler that big, that mature, that strong and that good of a player,” he added.
The Pollitz brothers played college basketball at Miami of Ohio, and still didn’t see a player who compared to James.
“We played against some really good teams. We played Kansas and Illinois. But there was no one who was really close to LeBron in what he could do on the court,” Eric Pollitz said.
O-G went into both games believing it could win but knowing it would be a huge task.
“It wasn’t a normal game but it was just another game, if that makes sense,” Tim Pollitz said.
Retired Ottawa-Glandorf coach Dave Sweet said his team was “about as relaxed and confident as we could be” when it arrived at Savage Arena in 2002 for its first game against St. Vincent-St. Mary.
But once they got to the arena, they learned it wasn’t going to be a normal game.
“We went to the training room to get our players taped and, all of a sudden, we’re told to get out because Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary and LeBron James had to come in and get taped,” Sweet said.
“I said, ‘Well, we’re not done yet,’ and they said to get it done in the locker room. I was walking on to the floor before the game to talk to one of the players and one of the guys (LeBron’s body guards) puts his hand up and says, ‘Step back, sir.’
“I said, “No, I’m the coach. I’m going out to talk to one of my players. I’m not going out there to talk to LeBron,” he said.
While being evicted from the training room might have thrown O-G off its routine the first year, it fired up the Titans when it happened again the next year.
“Nick Ruhe gave probably the best pre-game speech we could have asked for. We got kicked out of the training room for the second year in a row and he came back madder than all get out. He got the team together and gave a great, fiery speech,” Sweet said.
The beginning of the 2002 to 2004 match-ups between Ottawa-Glandorf and St. Vincent-St. Mary was when the Irish moved up to Division II after winning back-to-back titles in Division III and they came out of a district linked to the Toledo regional.
“I never understood why they came this way,” Sweet said.
But because they did, Ottawa-Glandorf might have missed out on three straight trips to the state tournament.
It is one of the great “What if?” questions in Ohio high school basketball in northwest Ohio. What if St. Vincent-St. Mary hadn’t been there? What if it had stayed in Division III?
“When I was in college and maybe a couple years outside college, I thought about that more than I do now. I know it gets brought up,” Tim Pollitz said.
“I would say there would have been a great chance of winning the state championship those other two years, primarily my sophomore year in 2002. I always say that team was by far the best team I know of in Ottawa-Glandorf history. It was just a loaded team on all fronts. But, unfortunately, we bumped into a powerhouse,” he said.
Eric Pollitz said, “There are times when you look back and think, ‘Oh, what if?’ But, more than anything, I think all the guys look back and think that was an amazing experience.”
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