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Inconsistent Poland gets past Boardman
By Steve WILAJ
BOARDMAN
Boardman was hanging around.
Trailing Poland — which beat the Spartans by 39 points earlier in the season — by just six at halftime, the Bulldogs built their lead to eight points, then 10 midway through the third quarter.
“Then I felt that collectively — as a community and as a team — the thought was, ‘Hey there it goes,’” Spartans coach Pat Birch said. “The belief that we can beat a team like Poland is something that we’re still trying to establish here.”
The Bulldogs continued to build their lead and used an 18-2 second-half run to defeat Boardman, 58-37, on Friday. Still, much like the Spartans (4-6), Poland coach Ken Grisdale believes his team is a work in progress.
“Coach Birch put a nice game plan together and they handled our press a lot better than the first time,” Grisdale said. “But we’ve yet to put a solid 32-minute game together. We’ll play two or three possessions really well, and then we’ll kind of go to sleep two or three possessions.
“I’m not comfortable with where our personnel is completely. I gotta figure it out, but I haven’t yet.”
Boardman — which was paced by Gannon Murray’s 10 points — tied the Bulldogs at 17 after the first quarter. Poland (6-2) — which was led by Jared Burkert’s 14 points, Dan Black’s 12 and Jake Burns’ 10 — took a 13-7 second-quarter advantage.
Looking for more energy, Grisdale then inserted reserves Austin Wilson and Nick Romeo into the starting lineup to begin the third quarter.
“My first group may be a little comfortable right now and I just wanted to stir it up a little bit,” Grisdale said. “I thought Austin did a really good job in the second half when he started and I liked how Kyle [Dixon] played off the bench.”
In turn, Poland outscored Boardman 14-8 in the third quarter and 14-5 in the fourth. It was the Bulldogs’ first game since a 65-50 loss at Warren G. Harding on Jan. 3.
“We gave up a lot of shots — a lot of rebounds that we could have got,” said Burns, a 6-foot-7 reserve forward. “But then in the second quarter and second half, we started turning it up. It was really nice to come back and get a pretty nice win and get the flow back together.”
The Spartans never found their rhythm in the second half, finishing 13 of 40 from the field (32 percent). John Ryan added seven points.
“Offensively in the first half we were very patient,” Birch said. “We made them defend and moved the ball. But I think they did a good job in the second half of getting us out of that.”
Meanwhile, Poland was 20 of 35 from the field (57 percent). Burns said there’s one way the Bulldogs can work toward consistent play.
“Just go as hard as you can in practice,” he said. “Try to make it like a game — play hard and try to get in a rhythm.”