Ottawa-Glandorf’s Lily Haselman (right) gets the ball away from Liberty Center’s Emerson Gray during a Thursday Division III regional semifinal at the Elida Fieldhouse. See more high school basketball photos at LimaScores.com.
Richard Parrish | The Lima News
Ottawa-Glandorf expected a tough, physical game in its Division III girls basketball regional semifinal against Liberty Center at the Elida Fieldhouse on Thursday night and it got one.
It also got a 48-29 win in a game that was never close after the second quarter.
“We saw on tape it was going to be a physical game so we needed to be as physical as possible and hope our discipline would wear on them and I think it did eventually,” Ottawa-Glandorf coach Troy Yant said.
“You could tell they’re used to applying pressure. They got some turnovers in the first quarter before our girls settled down,” he said. “Early on their pressure kind of got to us. I don’t think the girls were prepared for it.
“It’s just a matter of absorbing their pressure and getting to the other end of the floor and see what happens.”
Karsyn Erford led Ottawa-Glandorf (23-3) with 11 points, including going 3 for 3 on 3-pointers. Peyton Armey’s 8 points led Liberty Center (22-4).
Ottawa-Glandorf will play Castalia Margaretta at 7 p.m. Saturday in the championship game of the Elida Division III regional with the winner advancing to the state tournament.
Margaretta won 53-52 over Harvest Prep in Thursday night’s other regional semifinal at Elida.
Liberty Center was confused, frustrated and overwhelmed by O-G’s defense in the first half when the Titans led 26-10 after two quarters and it didn’t get much better for the Tigers in the second half.
They shot 11 percent on field goals (2 of 14) in the first half. Their first field goal came 2 ½ minutes into the game and their second wasn’t until 11 minutes later. For the game, they hit 9 of 39.
Ottawa-Glandorf forced Liberty Center into 15 turnovers in the first half – nine of them in the first quarter. At the end of the game, Liberty Center had 32 turnovers.
The Titans started slowly on offense and had some turnover issues of their own early with seven in the first quarter and 10 in the first half.
But from a 3-3 tie three and a half minutes into the game, they went on an 18-0 run to go up 21-3, with a 3-pointer by Kaelyn Grothause with 3:38 left in the first half finishing off the outburst.
Kylie Leibacher’s 28 points led Margaretta in its win over Harvest Prep. The Bears hit six 3-pointers in the first 10 minutes of the game to jump out to a 24-8 lead.
They were still ahead 33-21 at halftime and had hit 7 of 11 3-pointers.
Harvest Prep took the lead in the fourth quarter and held it until the final minute. Margaretta went up 53-50 and the game ended weirdly for Harvest Prep.’
The Warriors called timeout with 1.2 seconds to play and were inbounding the ball from under their own basket in a situation that called for a 3-point attempt.
But the player who caught the inbounds pass apparently wasn’t aware of the score or the situation and took one dribble and banked in a two-point shot just before the clock hit 0:00.
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Reach Jim Naveau at 567-242-0414.
