Wednesday, February 22, 2017
AUSTINTOWN
Tuesday’s two-point fourth quarter proved costly to the Austintown Fitch boys basketball team.
Regulation ended with the Falcons missing a game-winning attempt, sending the game against Alliance to overtime.
The Aviators outscored the Falcons 10-7 in the extra session to claim a 54-51 victory.
Fitch led the throughout most of the first half and the third quarter. Then Alliance tied the game at 27 with six minutes remaining in the third. Three minutes later, the aviators led 34-33.
But when Ryan Sheffield hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer, the Falcons took a 42-39.
“Going into the fourth quarter with the lead, we’ll take that obviously any day of the week,” Fitch head coach Brian Beany said. “We had some looks but we slowed it down some.
“They weren’t pressing that much in the second half and towards the end there they let us kind of hold the ball, so we were going to hold it for the final shot,” Beany said. “We probably held it for two minutes. We tried to get a shot off and we didn’t make it.”
After a Fitch timeout with nine seconds remaining, senior Randy Smith took the shot but it was rejected on his drive through the lane.
“We just pulled it out and tried to get the last shot, it just didn’t work out,” Smith said. “It was a tough loss.
“We took them into overtime and we had a chance to win it, we just couldn’t capitalize down the stretch,” Smith said. “We were feeling really good, we were controlling the pace of the whole game but we just let it slip away.”
Fitch kept it close to start the overtime session but Alliance hit a few more free throws than the Falcons to close out the game.
“We just wanted to play solid in overtime,” Alliance head coach Larry Kukura said. “I thought offensively we were just playing too fast, too much off the dribble.
“We just needed to get more ball movement, more screening and play a little more inside-out and I thought we did that in overtime. And we made our foul shots.”
Kukura praised the Falcons effort.
“[Smith] was hard to guard and they have a couple good shooters,” he said. “They just played really hard and scrappy and physical tonight and I think it took us out of our game in the first half. But we recovered in the second half and played much better.”
It was the 200th win for Kukura at Alliance, formerly the head coach at Brookfield.
Sarrick Sampson led Alliance with 15 points and nine rebounds while D.J. Hancock added 11 points and seven boards.
“We’re 18-4 and we won our league title [Northeastern Buckeye Conference],” he said. “I think we won 14 of our last 15 so we’ve been playing good basketball the last three weeks.”
Smith led the Falcons with 20 points.
“Yeah it was alright but I’d rather have the win any day,” Smith said. “My teammates found me when I was open and I knocked down some good shots,” he said.
Beany was happy with his team’s performance despite the loss.
“They battled the whole time,” he said. ““I’m not disappointed with the effort, I’m not disappointed in how we played.”