UPPER SANDUSKY (Crawford County Now) — Struggling through a season marred by injuries and defections, Bucyrus doesn’t have the record envisioned by coach Brian Hargis at the outset.

But it doesn’t mean the Redmen aren’t dangerous as Upper Sandusky found out on Friday.

Bucyrus trailed by 15 points with just over three minutes left, then rallied to within three, before falling, 52-48, to the Rams in the Northern 10 Athletic Conference season finale for both teams.

Upper Sandusky (8-14, 7-7 N10) had problems hitting free throws and got outrebounded down the stretch, which allowed the Redmen to narrow the gap.

“We didn’t rebound good late. We got a 15-point lead and didn’t rebound good late,” Upper Sandusky coach Jeff Winslow said. “And then you can’t go three of 10 from the free throw line late. Those things add up.”

The Rams led 49-34 on a free throw by Troy Hoffbauer with 3:17 left in the game. From there, Bucyrus (2-19, 1-13) outscored the hosts, 14-3, but ran out of time.

The game was close throughout until early in the fourth quarter. Upper Sandusky led 14-13 after the first period and 26-24 by halftime.

The score at intermission was due an earlier Redmen rally. After trailing 26-18, they scored the last six points of the second quarter. The Rams made a modest gain in the third to lead 38-32 at period’s end to set the stage for the intense final eight minutes.

“They played well,” Winslow said of the Redmen. “We just had stretches of letting them back in the game.”

The Rams looked to put the game away early in the fourth period, scoring the first seven points to increase their lead to 45-34 on a basket by Josh Heilman with 6:35 left.

Bucyrus stayed in the game despite turning the ball over 16 times to just six for Upper Sandusky. The Redmen did have a 38-30 advantage on the glass and free throws were nearly identical. The Rams had 11 more shot attempts, but the Redmen had a higher percentage (42%-36%) despite hitting just three of 17 from 3.

“We’ve been averaging under 10 (turnovers) a game. We don’t turn the ball over at all,” Winslow said. “But it’s kind of getting offset a lot of times because we give up too many offensive rebounds. That’s the reason we’re staying in games because we don’t turn it over, but we’ve got to rebound the ball better.”

The Redmen were looking to avenge a 70-28 blowout by the Rams at Bucyrus in December. The Redmen were missing leading scorer Dylan Coppler due to injury in that game.

“They’re a lot better with Coppler. He’s a nice player,” Winslow said. “We couldn’t keep (Charlie) Randall out of the paint. He’s a beast. He killed us.”

Coppler finished with a game-high 17 points, eight of which came in the critical last three minutes of the game. Carson Witten added 13 points and Coppler grabbed 10 rebounds. The Redmen were an impressive 15 of 25 from 2-point range.

Upper Sandusky had three double-figure scorers led by Matt Schoenberger with 13 points. Heilman finished with 12 and Luke Schoenberger had 10 points and eight rebounds.

“We’ve just got to regroup. We played really well the other night against Ottawa-Glandorf (a 45-44 overtime loss),” Winslow said. “We played streaky tonight. You’ve got to give Bucyrus some credit for that. They played well. I think (Hargis) does a good job. They run some good stuff, (he) does some things to try to keep them in games.”

The Redmen have one regular season game left, Saturday at Mansfield Christian, before meeting N10 champion Colonel Crawford in the Division VI sectional tournament next Friday.

Upper Sandusky will begin preparing for its Division IV sectional game at Galion also on Friday.

“We won the game and move on from that, focus on Galion now,” Winslow said. “That’s our next mission, Galion.”

Upper Sandusky also won the junior varsity game, 53-28. Caleb Arter had 11 points for the Rams, while Roman Russell and Lucas Alspach had 10 each.

Cooper Kalb, Micah Spears, and Kayden Baxter finished with 6 apiece for Bucyrus.

Box score

Bucyrus                    13       11         8       16 — 48

Upper Sandusky     14       12       12       14 — 52

Stats

Bucyrus (2-19, 1-13 N10): Shots 18-42; 3-pt. shots 3-17 (Lincoln Blizzard, Cohen Champman, Quin Ross); Free throws 9-18; Rebounds 38 (Dylan Coppler 10); Turnovers 16. Scoring: Charlie Randall 3 0 6, Lincoln Blizzard 1 0 3, Cohen Chapman 1 0 3, Dylan Coppler 7 3 17, Carson Witten 5 3 13, Quin Ross 1 1 4, Da’Shawn Cosey 0 2 2.

Upper Sandusky (8-14, 7-7 N10): Shots 19-53; 3-pt. shots 6-24 (Matt Schoenberger 2, Jacob Romich, Ashton Clark, Wyatt Taylor, Luke Schoenberger); Free throws 6-18; Rebounds 30 (Luke Schoenberger 8); Turnovers 6. Scoring: Jacob Romich 1 1 4, Ashton Clark 2 0 5, Josh Heilman 5 2 12, Matt Schoenberger 4 3 13, Wyatt Taylor 3 0 7, Luke Schoenberger 4 1 10, Troy Hoffbauer 4 1 10.

JV: Upper Sandusky 53-28.