Bulldogs pull away from Niles to share AAC White championship

February 25, 2017 at 12:05a.m.

POLAND

Niles vs Poland

In front of a Senior Night crowd, Poland dug itself a bit of hole in the first quarter before rallying in the second half to put away Niles, 70-55, to clinch a share of the All-American Conference, White Tier.

As a tribute to their senior class, the Bulldogs had all four seniors in their starting lineup and trailed 10-2 before Poland head coach Ken Grisdale thought a quick change was needed before things got out of hand.

“I was scared. You don’t want to dig holes,” Grisdale said. “Our seniors are role players and they haven’t been put in the situation where all four of them were on the court at the same time at all season and very little at practice.”

So Grisdale brought in the cavalry a little sooner than he anticipated.

“We had a chance to win a league title and that’s not fair to the team and it’s not fair to the coaches who have worked very hard to dig a deeper hole,” Grisdale said. “I was hoping to keep them in there through the first quarter.”

Poland went on a 12-3 run the last 3:46 of the first quarter to take a 14-13 lead going into the second quarter.

But Cyler Kane-Johnson went on a sizzling tear in the second quarter and scored 13 of Niles’ 15 points in the quarter as Poland held on to a slim 30-28 lead at the intermission.

“I was real happy with that. We were right where we wanted to be against the No. 1 seed [in the Boardman district],” said Niles interim head coach Eric Marino. “We’re down two at halftime and we got a 16-minute ball game to try to win this thing and shock the AAC. But they’re good. That’s why they’re No. 1.”

Kane-Johnson, just a sophomore, ended the first half with 18 points and finished his performance with a game-high 33 points. He finished with seven 3-pointers.

“Cyler’s been able to do that before this year and then we’ve had Corbin Foy be able to do stuff like that this year so I wasn’t surprised that Cyler had a night like that,” Marino said. “That potential is always there on any given night.”

But Poland took over the game in the third period as sophomore Daniel Kramer began to kick it into gear. Kramer had a six-point first half, but finished with a team-high 29 points.

“We didn’t start very good so we knew that we had to keep pushing the ball and score as much as we could,” Kramer said. “The league title is a huge goal of ours from the start of the season so I knew I had to come out and have a good game to achieve our goal.”

Grisdale thought Kramer gave Niles all sorts of trouble.

“He’s a hard matchup. We had him out on the halfcourt dribble-penetrating with him for a big kid and he took the one all the way to the rim,” Grisdale said. “He’s not really a post player, but he’s playing that position because he’s the tallest guy on the floor but he’s more of a wing/forward type player. He has perimeter skills and thank goodness he had a good night.”

Senior Konnor Morse scored 10 points and had three rebounds. Morse didn’t play the past two seasons but earned the right to come back as a senior.

“It meant a lot. It was the first league championship I’ve ever been a part of so it definitely meant a lot,” Morse said. “It was exciting to be in there with the other seniors and get to play together. It was a special night.”

It all ended in a runaway victory as Poland (17-5) shared the league title with Edgewood. Sophomore Braeden O’Shaughnessy chipped in with 17 points and added a game-high nine rebounds.

“How can you not feel good about that? We’re elated” said Grisdale, who notched his 13th conference title. “We’ll take a share of the league title and we’re going to go into the tournament feeling real good about ourselves and we’re going to lay it all on the line and see what we can do.”