Wednesday, December 31, 2014
By Ryan Buck
struthers
A holiday break virus may have impacted most of the Poland High basketball team this week, but the Bulldogs were at least able to cure one of their ills Tuesday.
Poland (6-1) raced out to an early lead and dispatched All-American Conference foe Struthers, 62-42, at the Struthers Fieldhouse. The Bulldogs’ win comes one long week after they fell to Uniontown Lake, 57-43, in their first loss of the season.
“It’s been a tough week,” said Poland coach Ken Grisdale, who clearly needed a cough drop and a travel pack of tissues for the bus ride home. “We had that sickness come through. I missed two days of practice and I have never missed more than two days in 22 years I’ve been there. We were out of the routine with people injured and now we’re shuffling the lineup a little bit.
“This was a good way to help heal and we have a lot of things we need to improve on and take better care of the basketball.”
Bulldogs senior guard Kyle Dixon led the way with a game-high 18 points, including 10 in the first quarter.
Dixon knocked down four 3-pointers Tuesday and Poland made nine as a team, showcasing its abilities to utilize size inside and deft shooting outside.
“Coach [Grisdale] was talking to me before the game and he said basically to let stuff come to me and get into the flow,” Dixon said. “Right off the bat [point guard Nick] Gajdos made a couple nice kick-outs to me and I got open in the zone and knocked ’em down.”
Poland led 17-9 after one quarter and the onslaught continued into the second half. Six players scored in the third quarter — 10 players in all — as the Bulldogs’ balanced attack gradually opened up their lead.
Matt Baker’s 3-pointer at the outset of the second half gave Poland an 18-point lead. When Struthers’ Andrew Carbon cut Poland’s lead to 41-29 with 1:25 left in the quarter, a deep and savvy Bulldogs lineup responded.
Nick Buccieri’s basket-and-foul preceded Nick Romeo’s 3-pointer from the right corner before Romeo became a distributor. The smallish guard drove baseline finding Tate Duarte under the basket as the 6-foot-7 center set up Bucccieri for an easy layup.
“We wanted to come back tonight and compete with our best,” Dixon said. “It felt really good to play well and get a good team win.”
Ray Phifer led Struthers with 17 points. First-year coach Jim Franceschelli battled the Bulldogs as a player, an assistant and now as a head coach. He knew what to expect.
“We knew they were good and we thought playing [zone defense] was the best matchup for us,” said Franceschelli, who said he spent time in the hospital for illness this week as well.
“Poland’s Poland. If you would’ve told me before the night that they’d only score 62, I thought we’d be in the game at the end, but things didn’t bounce our way.”
Poland will meet new conference foe Warren Harding Saturday in what many might consider the biggest area game of the young season.
“Ever since they’ve been on our schedule, we’ve been looking forward to that game,” Dixon said, the newfound importance of their two regular-season meetings certainly not lost. “They’re a great team and we think we are, too. This is gonna be a big game even looking down the road.”