McDonald captures share of ITCL title
By Lowell Spencer
salineville
The McDonald High boys basketball team weathered the early storm, came back, held on, and eventually escaped with a hard-fought 47-43 overtime win at Southern Friday night to capture their fourth consecutive Inter Tri-County League Tier Two crown.
The Devils (12-8, 10-4) shared the title with Jackson-Milton.
“It’s a tie, but we are still going to get a trophy. We’ll still going to say we are ITCL champs,” said Blue Devils coach Brian Higgins said. “This is huge. This is huge.
“Going into this year everyone talked about rebuilding, and you know we weren’t sure what our record would be, and we thought if we could mature we could be good at the end of the year. For us to come in this year and get a conference championship it speaks volumes about this program.”
“It’s definitely a morale booster,” added senior Stephen Politano said. “When we were at 3-5 nobody was happy. We were all frustrated with ourselves, and we just set a goal and we reached it.”
Politano led the Devils with 20 points. None were as important as the off-balance jumper he hit from the top of the key with nine seconds remaining in regulation to tie the game at 40.
“Coach just said take the ball at them. I just did what he told me to do, and it went in. I was very happy with that, it was definitely a good moment,” Politano said.
The Indians’ Luke Griffith connected on two 3-pointers to give them a 14-4 advantage in the first quarter. However, McDonald used an 11-0 run to take a 15-14 lead with just over four minutes remaining before halftime. The Blue Devils carried a 19-16 lead into the locker rooms at intermission.
“Give them credit, they came right out and punched us right in the mouth from the get-go,” Higgins said. “The kids were ready to play. I think our kids were a little nervous going into the game. We knew we had that co-champion on the line tonight. It was a long bus ride and we came out a little flat.”
McDonald grabbed the third quarter momentum and pushed its lead to 29-22. Southern tied the game at 29-29 with 5:15 remaining in the fourth and it stayed tight the rest of the way.
“We put it on the back of Stephen Politano. He’s our best player, we gave him the ball, and if we were going to win it was going to be with Stephen, and if we were going to lose I’m OK with that because Stephen was shooting that ball,” Higgins said.
In overtime, Matt Seitz stole an errant Indians pass, drove for a lay-up and was fouled to give the Devils a 45-41 lead with 2:36 left. McDonald then iced the game at the line.