Just another night in the wild and wacky Southwestern Conference.
Gavin Dietrich banked in a 4-foot jump hook with just 2 seconds to play Jan. 6, giving host Olmsted Falls a hard-fought 71-69 victory over upstart Avon. With the victory, the Bulldogs remain unbeaten in SWC play at 5-0 and are now 8-1 overall, with the one loss coming on a holiday trip to Arizona. Avon falls to 2-5 and 1-4.
When asked about how he felt about being atop the SWC in early January, Olmsted Falls coach Chris DeLisio seemed to have been caught off-guard.
“I really don’t think about it,” DeLisio said. “It’s just so early. Three, four, five losses have won the league the past few years. That’s the goal, but honestly, the goal is to go 1-0 every night.”
In fact, the Bulldogs went 1-0 in each of the past two nights, first defeating Amherst and then edging Avon in a game that was rescheduled after both schools made the football playoffs.
The Avon game had two separate personalities — the first and fourth quarters were close battles while the second and third quarters were dominated by one of the squads. In the second period, the Bulldogs turned up the pressure defense a notch and closed the period on an 18-1 run to open a 43-28 lead at the intermission.
“I think our defense sparked the run for us,” DeLisio said. “We had a lot of good defensive possessions.”
But Avon refused to give in, outscoring Olmsted Falls by a 28-13 margin in the third period to knot the score at 56 entering the final period.
“I know we were down by 15, but I felt the game was a lot closer than that,” Avon coach Kevin Sapara said. “We challenged the guys and they did everything we asked of them. I’m proud of the effort.”
The Eagles got back into the game by doing two things — hitting 3-pointers and taking care of the ball. They made five of their 12 3s in the third quarter and had only one of their 15 turnovers during the same period.
“We knew that they thrive off of turnovers, and we felt if we could beat their press, we’d be OK,” Sapara said. “When we beat the press, we were fine, but when we didn’t, we gave up a lot of easy baskets.”
Olmsted Falls scored the first six points of the final quarter to open a 62-56 lead, but Avon tied the score at 64 on consecutive 3-pointers by Jake Parker and Jacob Chasteen. The teams then traded baskets until Parker hit another huge bomb, this time from the right side with 54 seconds to play, evening the score at 69.
The Bulldogs ran the clock down to 20 seconds and then called a timeout. DeLisio drew up a play that involved using guard Eric Hanna as a decoy. The junior led Olmsted Falls with 25 points, and when he ran off a screen toward the left corner, Avon’s defenders switched, which left Dietrich flashing across the lane with his defender on his back.
“We hoped they would overreact to Eric,” DeLisio said. “We felt good about (Dietrich) having the ball in his hands down low.”
As Dietrich cut across the lane, Braden Galaska hit him in stride just to the right of the basket. With his momentum carrying him out of the lane, Dietrich turned his left shoulder toward the basket and banked the ball in cleanly.
“We’ve had that play in for a while,” Dietrich said. “They knew Eric is a good shooter. The defensive guys switched out and that left me open. The shot was no different than what we work on in practice.”
Dietrich finished the night with 14 points, as did Tom Lloyd, the only senior on the Olmsted Falls roster.
Avon had one last desperation heave from Ryan Maloy, whose ¾-court shot appeared to be on line but feel harmlessly short as the buzzer sounded.
Maloy led the Eagles with 26 points. He was backed by Dean Emerine with 16, Parker with 11 and Chasteen with 10.
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