By: Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
The Buckeye Central Bucks and Plymouth Big Red battled down to the wire Saturday night, but it was BC picking up the victory in the final seconds by a score of 49-48.
Out pacing the Big Red the Bucks jumped out to a 24-17 halftime lead, but Plymouth roared back in the third quarter outscoring BC 21-11 to take a 38-35 lead going into the fourth quarter.
With 4 minutes to go in the game and an 8 point deficit to overcome Buckeye Central Coach Phil Loy instructed his players to start going to the rim every possession.
“That was our goal at halftime, and it wasn’t happening as well as it should have, but our goal was to go inside and out just pound it, and pound it, and pound it as much as we could, or look to attack. We are not shooting the ball well so we don’t want to settle for perimeter shots and hope something goes in. We want to attack the basket and go inside with post-ups and that got us back into it,” Loy said.
The players took note and battled back. An offensive rebound by Scott Heydinger off a missed free throw with under 20 seconds to go gave Buckeye Central a chance to snatch victory away from the clutches of defeat. With 11 seconds to go in the game Buckeye Central’s Warren Wechter hit a layup for the game winner.
Buckeye Central was led by Jacob Shade with 21 points. Grant Loy contributed a double-double to BC’s cause scoring 14 points and grabbing 14 boards.
Loy said he was happy to get out of the game with a victory.
“I was concerned about this game for two reasons Plymouth because they had been beat up over their last 4 games pretty good and how are they going to respond to that. For us we had just come off a tough loss, and I didn’t like our last three practices. Our practices Thursday, Friday, and walkthrough this morning we were sluggish, just going through the motions, it wasn’t crisp, and it just showed,” Loy said. “We never took it the way we should have. We were getting out hustled, we had poor shooting, but like I told them I will take an ugly win over an ugly loss any day.”
Plymouth’s leading scorer was Remington Smedley with 12 points.
Buckeye Central will next play the Wynford Royals on Friday, January 8 at Buckeye Central.
PHOTO GALLERY: Buckeye Central vs. Plymouth
In other action around the county Wynford was defeated by Northmor 60-39. Alex Crall led Wynford with 13 points. Colonel Crawford was defeated by Northmor 44-42.