Friday, March 19, 2010
By JOE scalzo
scalzo@vindy.com
CANTON
About 20 feet outside his locker room in the basement of the Canton Civic Center, Poland High boys basketball coach Ken Grisdale sat slumped in a chair, sipping a water bottle.
“Been better,” he said. “Been worse.”
That was sort of the tale of Thursday’s game. Poland couldn’t have started much better or ended much worse.
After the Bulldogs ran out to a 15-point lead midway through the third quarter, Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary turned up the pressure on the Bulldogs and they couldn’t recover, falling to the Irish 74-60 in a Division II regional semifinal.
“We ran out of gas,” said Grisdale.
For the first 23 games of the season, Grisdale relied on an energetic five-player second unit to give his starters a breather and take advantage of a tired opponent. But the taller, longer Irish jumped on those five players, forcing Grisdale to play his starters major minutes.
By the end of the third quarter it took its toll as SVSM (17-6) outscored Poland 35-9 over the last 10:22.
“When we scouted them, we saw that the second unit didn’t really look to extend any lead; they just tried to play against a group that was tired and get some cheap ones,” said Irish coach Dru Joyce. “Nothing against that, but we made a decision that when the second unit went in, we were gonna turn up the pressure.
“It hurt them. When you play that line substitution and you don’t get to make that substitution in the second half, they were very tired.”
Senior Ben Donlow scored 16 points and grabbed nine rebounds and classmate David Baker added 15 points and 11 rebounds for the Bulldogs (22-2). Niko Fatimus added 14 points and Luke Wollet had 12 with six assists.
Those four players, all seniors, combined to score 57 of Poland’s 60 points, with starting senior point guard Dom DeFelice adding the other three.
Fatimus and Donlow, who were starters as sophomores, led a senior class that went 65-8 over the past three years.
When asked to talk about their contributions, Grisdale paused.
“There aren’t words,” he said. “We’ve been through so many things, good and bad. They’re a great group to be able to be around and they’ve given the community so many things to look forward to.”
He shook his head.
“Irreplaceable.”
Sophomore Lorenzo Cugini scored 18 points to lead five Irish players in double figures. Senior Dominique Mitchell had 13 points off the bench as SVSM’s reserves outscored Poland 19-0.
“Where did he come from?” Grisdale said of Mitchell. “In the [district final against Akron] Buchtel, he hit two 3s and in the games we saw beforehand, he was a non-factor.
“He got them going.”
Wollet, however, sparked the game’s biggest decision. After hurting the Irish with his dribble penetration, Joyce opted to switch to a 2-3 trapping zone at the start of the fourth quarter, mainly to stop Wollet.
“I think that’s the defense that turned it around for them,” Grisdale said.
SVSM advanced to play Cleveland Benedictine in Saturday’s regional final. The Bengals won the opener over Cleveland Collinwood 75-47.
Grisdale, whose teams have advanced to the state semifinals three times this decade, compared this year’s regional to the one his team faced in 1996, which featured defending state champions Orrville and Cleveland Villa Angela-St. Joseph.
“If we would have got them [the Irish], less than 48 hours you go back and get Benedictine,” he said. “Benedictine didn’t really get pushed.
“V’s got pushed tonight. It’ll be interesting to see how quick they recover.”