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Donlow’s skills, unselfishness propel Poland
By Joe Scalzo
scalzo@vindy.com
POLAND
Photo
Poland senior Ben Donlow (24) scores a basket against Niles in a Division II tournament game at Boardman High School on March 8. Donlow, who recently surpassed 1,000 career points, leads the Bulldogs against Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary tonight in a regional semifinal at the Canton Memorial Civic Center.
It was after midnight, a few hours after the biggest regular season win of the season, when Poland High boys basketball coach Ken Grisdale heard his phone ring.
“I answer it and hear, ‘It’s Ben [Donlow]. How you doing, coach?’ ” Grisdale recalled. “He just wanted to talk about the game.”
Donlow’s buzzer-beating tip-in had lifted the Bulldogs past rival Canfield in the regular season finale last month and Grisdale — who had been harder on Donlow than any other player the past few seasons — was happy to relive it.
“At times, it’s been a battle but I love the kid,” said Grisdale. “My expectations of him have always been extremely high and my job is to push him to the potential that he has.
“I’m hard on him and sometimes he wonders, ‘Do I like him?’ But he’s handled it.”
Donlow, a 6-foot-4 forward who reached 1,000 career points in last week’s district final win over Mooney, is averaging 15 points and eight rebounds this season for the Bulldogs (22-1), who will meet Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary tonight in a Division II regional semifinal in Canton. It’s the third regional trip in four years for Poland, which lost to Streetsboro in last year’s district final.
Donlow, a three-year starter, was probably good enough as a freshman to earn minutes for the Bulldogs, Grisdale said, but Poland had a good senior core that would eventually lead the team to Columbus. The next season, Donlow worked his way into the starting lineup along with classmate Niko Fatimus, benefiting from an unselfish senior class that again advanced to the state semifinals.
“They did sacrifice,” said Donlow. “[Senior] Ben Umbel was playing the whole game the year before and he could have averaged 20-some points per game. That sacrifice allowed us to play.”
Two years later, Donlow is in the same position.
Because Poland is so deep, Donlow doesn’t play as much as he might at other schools and Grisdale said he could probably average 25 points and 15 rebounds per game if he played the whole game.
“But he’s been very, very unselfish,” he said. “He puts the team first.”
Donlow, the son of Ben and Kimberly Donlow, started playing basketball in the first grade at the YMCA. Although he also played football and ran track through middle school — classmate Luke Wollet believes Donlow would have been a Division I football player if he stayed with it — basketball was his preferred sport and became his full-time focus in high school, where he has gone 65-7 as a varsity player.
He’s ranked 35th among seniors in Ohio this year by one scouting service, including sixth at his position, and has gotten a lot of interest from Division II schools.
“His best basketball is ahead of him,” said Grisdale, who has put Donlow’s younger brother Brandon to work this season as the team’s water boy. “He’s grown up a lot and I’m proud he’s been able to put up with the coaching.”
Tonight’s game is a rematch of the 2002 state semifinal, which the Irish won 76-36. Donlow moved to Poland soon after and, years later, was asked by SVSM coach Dru Joyce to play for his AAU team, the King James Shooting Stars. (He instead chose the Cleveland Bearcats.)
If the Bulldogs can pull off the win tonight, they would likely play Cleveland Benedictine, which lost to Poland in the 2008 regional final and whose top players are familiar to Donlow from AAU.
“It was a lot of fun going to state,” said Donlow. “I hope we can do it again.”