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Western Reserve survives slow start
By ERIC FORTUNE
LOWELLVILLE
It wasn’t a rope-a-dope performance from the Western Reserve Blue Devils in the first half as they struggled against the Lowellville Rockets’ strong zone defense
But with Lowellville short-handed, it seemed Western Reserve would have fresh bodies in crunch time.
The Blue Devils did, and they came out punching in the second half to throttle the Rockets 54-38 in an Inter-Tri County League, Blue Tier matchup.
“All the credit to them,” Western Reserve coach Patsy Daltorio said. “They did a really good job defensively in their zone matching up. We didn’t do a real good job of executing and we weren’t hitting shots. You sit in a zone and the other team isn’t making shots, there is no reason to change.”
The Rockets (11-11, 5-5) ran only a six-man rotation and dictated the flow in the first half holding the Blue Devils (17-4, 8-2) to 7-of-22 shooting.
It worked nearly to perfection as Lowellville held an 18-16 lead at the half.
Alex Mamula led the Rockets with six points in the first half. He finished with a team-high 13 points.
“They aren’t very deep,” Daltorio said. “It’s five-and-a-half kids. [Nate] Solak is still coming back from an injury. That’s what they need to do. They played to their strength and it worked out well for them, but our kids responded in the second half getting to the basket, playing unselfishly and really did a nice job defensively.”
The Blue Devils scored the first six points of the third quarter for a 22-18 advantage. The Rockets were just 2 of 9 in the third and the Blue Devils were 9 of 11.
“We said the first three minutes of the second half was going to dictate the rest of the game,” Daltorio said. “We had some good discussion at halftime. The kids came out and responded. That was one of the better halves of basketball we’ve played in a long time.”
With a 35-25 lead, the Rockets abandoned their zone defense that had given the Blue Devils fits for most of the game.
Cole DeZee and Cole Hilles scored 13 of the Blue Devils’ 19 points in the quarter as the Western Reserve ball movement was nearly flawless.
“I actually thought we played good defense the whole game,” Lowellville coach Matt Olson said. “We held them under 60 points which is a hard task with the No. 2 seed in our [Division IV] tournament.
“Offensively, we struggled. Our shots weren’t falling from the outside. We started to panic when we started to go down. We forced some shots.”
The Rockets got it back within single digits at numerous times in the final quarter, but Jack Cappabianca scored nine of his game high 18 points in the final quarter for the Blue Devils.
“They were getting the ball inside and kind of bullying us inside getting layups,” Olson said. “Our goal was to front him inside the post. We knew he was strong. Once he gets the ball inside, he’s tough to stop. We were trying to front him in the post.
“We had to switch to man because we were down. We didn’t want to sit in a zone. When we did that, he started getting his way down low.”