Galion staves off Upper for basketball win

By JON KLEINKNECHT

Inquirer Sports Editor

sports@galioninquirer.com

“We can never make it easy,” said a some­what amused Ed Rich after watch­ing his Galion Tigers nearly blow an 8-point lead in the final 72 sec­onds of a 36–34 win over the Upper San­dusky Rams at the high school last night.

The tri­umph was the third con­sec­u­tive for the Orange-and-Blue who are 7–9 over­all and 4–4 in the North Cen­tral Con­fer­ence. The Rams — who had beaten the locals four times in a row over two sea­sons prior to Fri­day — tum­ble to 8–8 over­all and 6–3 in the NCC.

Galion’s Austin Prosser con­verted a pair of free throws with 1:12 left in the con­test to give the hosts a seem­ingly com­fort­able cush­ion, 36–28.

A rebound bucket by Upper fresh­man Car­son Mit­ter­maier with :59 show­ing on the score­board clock made it 36–30. The Tigers then turned the ball over on their next three pos­ses­sions with the Rams scor­ing buck­ets with 48 and 32 sec­onds to play, mak­ing it 36–34.

Galion’s third turnover was with 14 sec­onds to go. After call­ing a time­out, Upper San­dusky missed what would have been a game-tying shot in the paint with under three sec­onds left. The Tigers bat­tled for the rebound, secur­ing the victory.

The Orange-and-Blue played a phe­nom­e­nal game defen­sively lim­it­ing the vis­i­tors to just 10 points in the first half. Junior guard Ridge Durbin of the Tigers matched that total him­self as Galion went into half­time up 18–10.

Upper cut the gap to four points — 26–22 — by the end of the third stanza, and took the final eight min­utes, 12–10.

“I think our defense was pretty stel­lar,” a smil­ing Rich said. “Win­ning the rebound bat­tle (22–17) was tremendous.”

In talk­ing about his squad’s implo­sion in the lat­ter moments of the bat­tle, he laughed and said, “We were kind of ner­vous. No doubt we freaked out.”

Galion made 12-of-24 field goal attempts, 4-for-10 from behind the 3-point line. The Rams were just 13-for-37 from the floor for 35 per­cent. Foul shoot­ing had the win­ners nail­ing 8-of-12 and the vis­i­tors were only 6-for-13. The Tigers turned the ball over 16 times and the Rams, just 6.

Durbin tal­lied a team-high 11 points for Galion. Prosser added 8, Austin Chap­lin and Tony Kirk, 6 each; Hous­ton Blair and Lucas Bohach, 2 apiece; and Stephen Nog­gle, a free throw. Chap­lin also grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds.

Trent Howard and Joe Reile gar­nered 11 points each for the Rams. The Tigers held Reile — Upper’s lead­ing scorer this sea­son — score­less in the first half

Rich cited Lucas Bohach’s play off the bench on defense. “He really played well on the help side,” the second-year head coach stated. “What he did won’t show up in the stats, but he did a great job on defense.”

Galion’s reserves won 48–26. Bren­dan Pratt scored 12 points and Evan Hug­gins, 11, for the winners.

The Tigers host Wyn­ford tonight in what is the final home game of the sea­son for the locals.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Feb 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.