Columbiana short on bodies, but Clippers get the job done

Springfield’s Jarrod Lewis cut the deficit to six before the Tigers lost 67-55.

By ERIC HAMILTON

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

COLUMBIANA — During Tuesday’s key Inter-Tri County League boys’ basketball contest, Columbiana lost its head coach, its leading scorer and another player left with a mouth injury. About the only thing the Clippers didn’t lose was the game.

Playing the second half without coach Eric Whitmer and senior Joe Blinsky after they were ejected, Columbiana proved its mettle by turning a four-point halftime lead into a 67-55 victory to remain unbeaten in league play.

To say the contest was physical wouldn’t do it justice. The game’s frantic pace started right away as the teams combined for 33 points in the first quarter. There were plenty of fouls called and bodies were flying.

The aggressive play came to a head with 10 seconds left in the second quarter with Columbiana clinging to a 37-33 lead. Blinsky and Springfield’s Devin Santangelo got tangled up under the basket, which prompted tempers to flare and brought both benches to their feet.

After talking the situation over for 10 minutes, the officials ejected Blinsky and Santangelo for their parts in the melee, along with Springfield’s Joe Musial and Columbiana’s Whitmer for coming off the bench.

“With the style they play, you’re going to have a physical contest,” said Springfield coach Grant Spaite. “It’s unfortunate what happened.”

Without Blinsky, who scored 15 points in the first half, Columbiana fared pretty well. The Clippers got a combined 29 points from the other four starters in the second half and valuable minutes off the bench from Frankie Carusone and Travis Denmeade.

Columbiana used a 9-1 outburst to start the third quarter to build a 12-point lead and survived a fourth quarter run from Springfield to improve to 12-1 overall and 8-0 in Tier One.

“Our kids are resilient and will do whatever they need to in order to win,” said Columbiana assistant coach Ron Adams, who took over for Whitmer in the second half. “Our seniors really took control tonight and made things easy on me. We’re a deep team and we got some huge play from our bench and whoever we called on did an excellent job.

“We just stayed with our game plan and kept the pressure on them on defense and kept attacking on offense. This is a huge win for us.”

The Clippers will be without Blinsky and Whitmer for the next two games, as the rules require a two-game suspension after being ejected. But as the rest of the team demonstrated, Columbiana has plenty of firepower to get through that stretch.

Kevin Blinsky led his team with a game-high 20 points. Josh Weikart added 16, while Andrew Tirpak (nine) and Ryan Williams (seven) chipped in.

“I don’t have anything to say,” responded Whitmer after the game. “All I’ll say is that the guys that finished the game really stepped up and that’s no surprise to my staff because we have great kids. You saw it, so write about it. That’s all I can say.”

The Clippers led by 12 with 5:41 left in the contest, but Springfield made a run to cut the deficit to 59-53 on a basket by Jarrod Lewis.

That’s as close as the Tigers (9-4, 6-3) got down the stretch. Despite the effort, Spaite wasn’t happy with his team’s performance.

“We didn’t play well enough to win tonight,” said Spaite. “We had a great opportunity to give them their first league loss, but we didn’t execute anything we practiced for this game.

“We got it to six points, but let it slip away. We gave up too many offensive rebounds in a row and those stick backs help them get it back to double digits.”