WILLARD — Colonel Crawford came in as the No. 1 seed in the Willard district and had size at every position. South Central countered with the District 6 Player of the Year, Simon Blair
Blair lived up to the hype, scoring a game-high 16 points — eight in the pivotal fourth quarter — to lead the Trojans to a 48-37 victory in the championship of the Division IV district at Willard High School.
The win marks the first district championship for South Central (21-4) since 1973-74 and it was the Trojans’ first appearance in the title game since 1996-97.
“In our pregame, we talked about there is no pressure,” South Central coach Brett Seidel said. “We got the monkey off our back in the sectional. Now it’s just time to go out and play. This is what the kids want to do. They want to play games.”
On the other side, the district final has become somewhat of a glass ceiling, as the Eagles lost the championship game for the third straight year.
“It’s a tough taste,” Colonel Crawford coach David Sheldon said. “Three years in a row we got here, and we haven’t got over the hump. We’ve just got to keep working. It’s like the game of life. Sometimes you hit adversity and you’ve got to get back up.”
In the first quarter, the Eagles looked every bit their billing as top seed. Jordan Fenner hit a pair of 3-point shots and Colonel Crawford (20-5) broke open a 6-6 tie midway through the opening frame to take a 16-8 lead by period’s end.
Worse yet for the Trojans, 6-4 post David Lamoreaux picked up his second foul near the end of the first quarter and sat the rest of the first half. He was the only Trojan to match the Eagles’ size, which went 6-3 to 6-5 at four of five positions.
“With them all being 6-4, 6-5, you take our 6-4 kid off the floor, I was nervous, I’m not going to lie,” Seidel said. “We had some of our kids just step up and dig the ball out of their bigs’ hands and I thought we got a lot of really, really handsy. Once the ball was entered, we were able to dig it out and get deflections.”
As a result, South Central scored 16 points and held Colonel Crawford to five to take a 24-21 lead by intermission. Blair scored six and Alex Holland added five to lead the charge.
“In the first half, they did a good job of getting hands every time we drove or in the post,” Sheldon said. “They were very strong. The first half, we had nine turnovers and just empty possessions. And we knew they were going to dig and we jus weren’t very strong with the basketball and that’s a credit to South Central.”
Defense dominated the third quarter, as each team struggled from the field. The Eagles were three of 12 and the Trojans were three of 11. South Central went to the fourth quarter with a tenuous 31-27 lead.
“We knew who could hurt us from the perimeter and who could hurt us from the paint and that’s what we concentrated on,” Seidel said. “We wanted to get the ball out of Fenner’s hands as much as possible. We tried to double him, double on ball screens, and try to double when he crossed half court because they like to run sets, especially in tournament play.”
Offensively, they wanted to get the ball into the of their leader, Blair. The junior accepted the mantle at crunch time as expected, scoring six points on three consecutive possessions to turn a four-point Trojans’ lead to 10, at 41-31, with under three minutes to play.
“Simon Blair is the District 6 Player of the Year and there’s a reason,” Sheldon said. “I mean, he guards you too. He’s an unbelievable defender. We know he can score, but he does a great job defensively because of his lateral quickness and how strong he is.”
“When you have a dynamic player like Simon Blair and you’re able to put the ball in his hands, when you have the lead and spread the floor, you feel pretty comfortable doing that,” Seidel said. “He’s comfortable and confident at all times and the kids tend to feed off that.”
Senior Zye Shipman tried to keep Colonel Crawford in it, scoring four points in the fourth quarter and grabbing three rebounds. But it was not enough as the Eagles could get no closer than eight points in the final three minutes.
“You look, through three quarters (Blair) had eight points and Zye did that,” Sheldon said. “Offensively, he just attacked the rim. You love to see a senior go out and he went out his last game playing very good basketball. I didn’t think we played our best game of the year and a lot of that was South Central, but Zye Shipman played one of his best games in his last game wearing an Eagles uniform.”
Shipman led Colonel Crawford with 12 points and nine rebounds and Fenner added 11. Chase Walker also had nine rebounds. Bruce Shull was the other senior who played his last game for the Eagles.
Isaiah Seidel seconded Blair’s 16 points with 10 for South Central and Holland finished with nine. Lamoreaux had 10 boards and eight points.
“After (the first quarter), we gave up 21 points for the remainder of the game,” Seidel said. “Our physicality and defensive pressure was the difference.”
“We struggled (shooting),” Sheldon said. “We got shots to the guys we wanted to get shots to when I look at the shot chart. We just didn’t make shots. That’s the tough thing about tournament basketball. It’s one game, one loss, one bad game and you go home.”
South Central advances to the regional tournament in Canton, where they will meet New Middletown Springfield on Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Canton Fieldhouse.
Box score
Colonel Crawford 16 5 6 10 — 37
South Central 8 16 7 17 — 48
Stats
Colonel Crawford (20-5): Shots 14-41; 3-pt shots 3-17 (Jordan Fenner 2, Gavin Feichtner); Free throws 6-9; Rebounds 31 (Zye Shipman 9, Chase Walker 9); Turnovers 15. Scoring: Reis Walker 0 2 2, Jordan Fenner 4 1 11, Zye Shipman 5 2 12, Gavin Feichtner 1 1 4, Chase Walker 4 0 8.
South Central (21-4): Shots 20-47; 3-pt shots 4-15 (Sam Seidel, Alex Holland, Isaiah Seidel); Free throws 5-7; Rebounds 25 (David Lamoreaux 10); Turnovers 7. Scoring: Simon Blair 8 0 16, Sam Seidel 1 0 3, Alex Holland 4 0 9, David Lamoreaux 2 4 8, Isaiah Seidel 4 1 10, Tycen Cooper 1 0 2.