Boys basketball: Lima Senior holds off Ottawa-Glandorf

LIMA — Lima Senior needed a tremendous defensive effort and some clutch free throw shooting down the stretch to hold off Ottawa-Glandorf, 52-48 in front of a near capacity crowd in a non league affair Saturday night.

The Spartans, who had lost its last three of four, improves to 6-4 on the year and Ottawa-Glandorf falls to 11-3 for the year.

“We weren’t necessarily looking forward to this game,” Spartan head coach Quincey Simpson said. “We knew they were going to bring the entire city when they play. There city supports them tremendously and I wish ours did the same. I wanted to see if my guys had some fight. I know that they do and we handed a few teams some wins. We feel like we personally have handed some teams some wins.

“It is good to see us come back in 24 hours and show some grit and some continuity and stick together for the entire 32 minutes and make plays when we needed to and make defensive stops when we needed to and come out with a victory.”

Many might have expected a high scoring affair as both these teams can put up point but instead Lima Senior head coach Quincey Simpson said he took off the full court press and focused on the halfcourt defense and the move paid off for the most part.

Lima Senior kept the Titans from making any significant runs and did an effective job of shutting down leading scorer Colin White. White, who was coming off a milestone of scoring a 1,000 points, was limited to 12 total points and just two in the first quarter.

“I am hard nosed uptempo coach,” Simpson said. “We scaled back. We didn’t press at all. We didn’t press one time and I didn’t know if that would hurt us or help us but I told our guys if we were going to scale off our full court pressure than our halfcourt pressure be phenomenal and I thought it was.”

Going into the final eight minutes, Lima Senior owned a 40-31 advantage and as much as 11 with 5:47 left in the game. However, the Titans began their comeback and on the strength of Caden Erford’s offense, he finished with a team-high 26 points pulled the Titans to within three, 49-46 with 52 seconds left.

Despite a flurry of chances to knot the score and take the lead, Ottawa-Glandorf fell short and the Spartans hit 4 of 6 free throws down the stretch to secure the win.

Lima senior Je’kel Cotton, who came into the game averaging 9.6 points a game, scored a team-high 16 points and Brandon Moore added 13 points. Hitting some big buckets in the third quarter was Amarion Glenn who hit a clutch three and a another key basket in the fourth to keep the Spartans ahead of the Titans,

“These guys understand, do your job and take the opportunity when it is there,” Simpson said. “I thought we shared the ball early and throughout the game and I thought we stuck with our game plan. We did’t rush any of our shots and I don’t think the crowd likes that but we have to value every possession and we did a great job of that tonight.”

Lima Senior held Ottawa-Glandorf to its lowest offensive of the season. The previous low was 53.

Reach Jose Nogueras at 567-242-0468.