Ottawa-Glandorf’s Colin White drives to the basket against Defiance’s Aidan Kiessling during Friday night’s game at Ottawa-Glandorf. See more high school basketball photos at LimaScores.com.
Don Speck | The Lima News
OTTAWA – Ottawa-Glandorf was behind for only around 10 seconds of the game when it beat Defiance to clinch at least a share of the Western Buckeye League boys basketball championship on Friday night.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? It wasn’t. The Titans had to make some plays under pressure down the final stretch of the game to come away with a 65-62 win.
O-G (16-3, 8-0 WBL) led by as many 12 points in the first half. It led by 10 points with four minutes to play.
But with less than a minute to play, the Titans found themselves tied, 62-62, with the Bulldogs (16-3, 6-1 WBL) after a fourth-quarter rally led by Cayden Zachrich and Bradyn Shaw, who scored 50 of Defiance’s 62 points in the game.
Shaw hit a 3-pointer to cut O-G’s lead to 62-60 with 2 ½ minutes to play, then drove for a bucket to make it 62-62 with 54 seconds to play.
Ottawa-Glandorf answered with a 15-footer by Colin White, for the lead at 64-62 with 36 seconds left in the game, then defended Defiance into putting up a rushed shot, which missed. A free throw by Hunter Stechschulte with five seconds left on the clock made it 65-62.
White finished with 30 points, most of them on mid-range jumpers and close to the basket shots. O-G’s other starters – Caden Erford, Theo Maag, Hunter Stechschulte and Grant Schroeder – scored between 5 and 9 points.
Zachrich led Defiance with 29 points and Shaw had 20 points.
“We knew they were going to make a run at some point and we just had to withstand that run. We called timeout and our coaches told us to calm down a little bit and take our time and we did that,” White said.
“I knew the mid-range game was going to be working tonight. All I had to do was rise up and just take the shot and it went in. I’m happy. I played well, the team played well and we got a win,” he said.
“To clinch a share is awesome. It’s a great feeling going into the last week of the season.”
O-G coach Tyson McGlaughlin said, “We did enough. We got that lead but a program like that, a team like that is not going to go down without a fight. You have to tip your cap to those guys.
“They (Defiance) hit a lot of big shots. A lot of people probably thought it was over. They’ve got guys who can score and who can score in bunches. We got in foul trouble and didn’t really have the rhythm offensively. We had a lot of different lineups in there,” he said.
O-G started the game by hitting 10 of its first 11 shots and shot 61 percent of its field goal attempts in the first half. In the game, it hit 60 percent (26 of 43). Defiance connected on 55 percent of its field goal attempts (23 of 42), including 7 of 10 during its fourth-quarter comeback.
Ottawa-Glandorf will finish the Western Buckeye League part of its schedule with a game at Kenton next Friday night.
Defiance has two WBL games left on its schedule – a home game against Bath today and a home game against Wapakoneta next Friday.
O-G has won or shared 20 WBL boys basketball championships, the most by any school in that league. The Titans were WBL champions last season. Defiance has won or shared eight WBL boys championships.
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Reach Jim Naveau at 567-242-0414.
