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Springfield survives at league rival
By LOWELL SPENCER
East Palestine
It wasn’t pretty. In fact, at times it was downright ugly when you consider it a showdown for the ITCL Upper Tier lead, but the Springfield Tigers will take it as they improved to 7-0 in the league with a 46-25 victory.
“Every game is important to us,” Springfield coach Eric Fender said. “EP and South Range right now are very important, but we try not to look past anybody every night we go into a game.”
Both teams came out firing as the first six shots were from 3-point range. The second period became a cold-shooting, turnover plagued affair. The two teams combined for only four points in the period, as Springfield took a 20-15 advantage at the halftime break.
“I did think that the game might have been one of those first one to 50 was going to win. I mean that is usually the style of play with both teams playing zone,” East Palestine coach Tom Bingham said. But he could not recall the last time a Bulldogs team had been held to such a low point total.
“We had more turnovers in a quarter tonight than we had in a whole game Tuesday night in an up-tempo game,” Bingham added.
The Bulldogs committed 17 of their 22 turnovers in the first half, after only having five in their previous game.
Springfield struggled shooting the ball as they hit only 22 percent from inside the arc in the first half.
“They really extended, you know I think this is a really big game. East Palestine knew this was a big game, because if they got us well then the league is back to being tied,” said Fender. “You know we didn’t hit some shots in the first half but the thing we told the kids is that defense is going to win you the game. And I think we held them to 26 points and when you do that anywhere, you’re going to give yourself an opportunity to win.”
In the second half the Tigers seemed to get more comfortable as they hit 32 percent from the floor while connecting on 14 of 19 free throws. As a result they methodically pulled further ahead, and only surrendered 10 second-half points to the Bulldogs.
The Tigers were led by Ron Rogers with 17 points, with nine points coming from the free throw line in the final minutes, and Russell with 11 points.
“I was hitting shots my first half, and the second half I wasn’t doing as much. My teammates really picked it up and really finished the game for us,” Russell said.
The Bulldogs’ high scorer was Jake DiCello, who collected 11-points.
“Springfield’s zone defense was outstanding. They took us out of everything we had,” said Bingham. “We tried different things and they took every single one of them away.”