Hoopsters escape with victory over Bucyrus

By JON KLEINKNECHT

Inquirer Sports Editor

sports@galioninquirer.com

The Galion Tigers escaped with a 53–51 tri­umph over the vis­it­ing Bucyrus Red­men last night.

With 5.8 sec­onds remain­ing, Bucyrus’ lone senior — Michael Pur­cell — took an inbound pass under the Galion bas­ket, drove up the right side of the court, and had a layup shot roll around the rim twice before falling off at the buzzer.

“A win’s a win,” said Galion head coach Ed Rich. “I’ll take it. We needed it.”

Yes they did.

The Orange-and-Blue entered the bat­tle with a 3–7 record, hav­ing lost six of their last seven. They now are 4–7, includ­ing a sea­son sweep of the Red­men (3–11).

The foes com­bined to launch 42 3-pointers in 32 min­utes of play. The Red­men were 11-for-28 from behind the arc and the Tigers, 6-for-14.

A trio of Ridge Durbin threes in the open­ing period were key in putting the locals up 14–9.

Galion outscored the vis­i­tors 16–10 in the sec­ond stanza to go into the locker room at half­time with a 30–19 cush­ion. Mid­way through the frame, Bucyrus coach Nate Hill was ejected after being slapped with a pair of tech­ni­cals. The Tigers bet­tered the Red­men 10–5 in the four-plus min­utes fol­low­ing his departure.

Second-half scor­ing began with a free throw by Galion’s Austin Chap­lin. The Red­men fol­lowed with three con­sec­u­tive treys, trim­ming the count to 31–28. Down­town­ers by Durbin and Tony Kirk, plus a Stephen Nog­gle 17-footer enabled the hosts to take the rest of the stanza 8–5, putting them on top 39–33.

With the Red­men down 52–48, junior guard Brian Snouf­fer swished his fourth 3-pointer of the game with :07 show­ing on the scoreboard.

Kirk was fouled on the ensu­ing inbound pass and made the sec­ond of two free throws. The rea­son he had two shots instead of a one-and-one sit­u­a­tion was because the Red­men had 10 fouls in the half mak­ing for a double-bonus situation.

“I thought we played hard,” Rich stated. “We’re still mak­ing a lot of the same mis­takes, though. That shouldn’t be hap­pen­ing at this point of the season.”

The Orange-and-Blue made 18-of-44 field goal attempts and just 11-of-24 free­bies. They entered the game as the worst free throw shoot­ing team in the North Cen­tral Con­fer­ence at 51 per­cent. Bucy-rus was 19-for-50 from the floor and 2-of-6 on char­ity tosses. The Red­men claimed a 30–27 rebound­ing edge and turned the ball over 11 times. Galion gave it away 13 times.

Durbin scored a game-high 21 points for the win­ners — 12 com­ing on treys. Kirk net­ted 11 points, Prosser, 8; Chap­lin, 5; Anto­nio Bur­ket, 4; Spencer Frizzell, 2; and Nog­gle, 2.

Snouf­fer knocked down a quar­tet of triples for a Bucyrus team-best 12 tallies.

The Tiger reserves picked up their fourth vic­tory in 11 tries, down­ing the junior Red­men 47–33. Fresh­man Colton Moore popped in a game-high 18 points for the hosts.

Both Galion squads are at Wyn­ford tonight.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Jan 19 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.