Thursday, February 21, 2008
Ursuline rolled past St. Thomas Aquinas in the other contest 63-44.
By ERIC HAMILTON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
SALEM — East Palestine’s Ben Gysin has hit some big baskets for his team this season, but none were more important than the one he delivered at the end of Wednesday night’s Division III sectional tournament game against Waterloo.
With the score tied and just three seconds left, the sophomore stepped to the free throw line with an opportunity to win the game. Not as calm and collected as he wanted to be, he missed the first shot.
But after a Waterloo timeout gave Gysin a minute to think things over, he converted the second free throw and Waterloo missed a desperation 3-pointer at the buzzer, giving the Bulldogs a 53-52 win.
“I was freaking out,” said Gysin when asked what he was thinking during the timeout. “My arm was shaking when I let go of the shot and I was just hoping it would go in. I just tried to go to the line like usual and shoot. I was just lucky that it went in.”
East Palestine (15-6) advanced to the district semifinals next Tuesday against second-seeded Ursuline, which beat St. Thomas Aquinas 63-44 in Thursday’s opening game.
The Bulldogs did their best at contending with Waterloo’s impressive perimeter shooting to stay close throughout. The Vikings drilled eight 3-pointers and led by as many as seven points in the second quarter.
With three minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, East Palestine trailed 47-41 after a 3 by Kurt Hamilton. JC Bollinger cut the deficit to 49-46 with a 3 of his own at the 1:10 mark.
The final 35 seconds of the game turned into a free throw contest. With Waterloo leading 51-50, Hamilton missed the front end of a 1-and-1. The Vikings had another opportunity with 20 seconds left, but split a pair of charity tosses to go ahead 52-50.
East Palestine senior Nick DiCello tied the score at 52 with two free throws with 11.9 seconds remaining.
On Waterloo’s next possession, the Vikings missed a potential game-winner and Gysin was fouled on the rebound, sending him to the line, where he secured the win.
“We have a lot of respect for Waterloo and they didn’t win 15 games for nothing,” said East Palestine coach Tom Bingham. “We knew they would hit their 3s, but we just tried to get out on them.”
DiCello, who finished with 15 points along with Bollinger, wasn’t ready to call it a season just yet.
“I usually hate practice, but I realized that if we lost, I’d actually miss it,” said DiCello.
The Irish advanced to the district semifinals for the third straight season by rolling up a big halftime lead and coasting to a victory over St. Thomas Aquinas.
Ursuline (12-9) did it with defense in the first half, holding the Knights to just nine points in the first two quarters and taking a 28-9 advantage into intermission.
Behind solid play from Nick McCartney, the Irish built a 24-point cushion in the third quarter. St. Thomas scored 19 points in the third and got within 43-28 on a 3-pointer at the quarter buzzer.
While his squad did advance and played extremely tough defense at times, Ursuline coach Keith Gunther was less than thrilled with the effort in certain situations.
“You’re going to have some letdowns at times, but you can’t allow that to happen at tournament time,” said Gunther. “We did not play well at all tonight and we better get that straightened out. We played good defense in the first half, but had St. Thomas made some shots, this game would have been a different story.”
St. Thomas had a size advantage inside, but was unable to exploit it because Ursuline’s lightning-quick guards put a lot of pressure on the ball at the top. When passing lanes did open up, the Irish were fast enough to close quickly.
“We knew their guards would have a hard time handling pressure on the ball, so we tried to push their offense as far out as we could,” said McCartney, who led the Irish with 27 points.