Another close loss
WGH drops home opener, 51-50, to Poland
WARREN — The Warren G. Harding basketball suffered a rude awakening to the 2016-17 season last Friday, and the Raiders appeared to fall back asleep and endure a nightmare in Game 2.
Poland’s Braeden O’Shaughnessy drove coast to coast unguarded and scored the game-winning bucket with 3 seconds remaining. A desperation heave by Harding fell short in a 51-50 loss that has the returning district champs a bit shaken to start the year.
The Raiders (0-2) were without 6-foot-10 standout center Derek Culver — a West Virginia recruit — and guard Lynn Bowden. Harding coach Andy Vlajkovich said Culver was not in school and Bowden was dealing with a “personal matter.” The Raiders still appeared to be outplaying the Bulldogs (2-0), who only had four players score in the game. Harding went on a 16-4 run to end the first half and led 28-22, but the Raiders were outscored 29-22 in the final two quarters and had a major defensive lapse on the final play.
“I don’t know if (Andrew Ziegler) slipped or what happened,” said Vlajkovich, who watched as two defenders lost their footing on the inbounds pass, allowing O’Shaughnessy to run free down the court. “I think he just slipped on the switch. We were trying to switch it, and he slipped.”
The Raiders just took a 50-49 lead after Mike Hughes sank two free throws with 8.6 seconds left. After the two players fell to the floor on the ensuing inbounds play — one Poland coach Ken Grisdale said was designed to create traffic — no one else picked up O’Shaughnessy. The sophomore, who finished with 15 points, drove into the lane and hit an uncontested runner a few feet in front of the hoop. Ziegler threw up a 3-point shot from about 10 feet behind the line, but it came up short.
“I got the ball, and I thought they’d step up, and I was going to kick it to Kyle Patterson” said O’Shaughnessy of the game-winning shot, “but no one ever came and stopped me, so I just kept going, took the shot and it went in. Great feeling.”
Not so much for Harding, which again fields one of the better teams in the area but is struggling to find chemistry and rhythm early in the season.
“Hopefully soon,” said Vlajkovich of when he expects the Raiders to gain a better feel for their style of play.
Both teams altered their gameplans with Culver out. Grisdale said he wasn’t expecting Harding to switch on every screen because that wasn’t something the Raiders did in last Friday’s loss to Boardman, when they blew a 13-point lead with 3 minutes remaining. Grisdale said he inserted different plays at halftime to combat the defensive scheme of Harding, and despite fielding a young and inexperienced lineup, the Bulldogs caught on quickly.
“We tried to take advantage of their switches (in the second half),” Grisdale said. “We were able to get the ball to Danny Kramer (17 points) at the rim, and we made a couple of nice passes. Braeden did a great job of penetrating and finishing. Down the line, they all did some really nice things to contribute after we had to scrap the gameplan we came in with because of what they were doing, and they adjusted well.”
Vlajkovich wasn’t at all happy with the pace at which Harding played.
While Poland tried to slow it down, he wanted the Raiders to speed the game up as often as possible. There were spurts where Harding forced turnovers (eight in the second quarter and 23 for the game), and the Raiders looked ready to take over in the second quarter, but their overall execution was inconsistent on both sides of the ball.
“Not even close,” replied Vlajkovich when asked if the game was played at the pace he wanted. “Faster, faster, faster. We were trying to press more, and we could never get in our press. We didn’t guard the way we’ve been guarding, and they did not follow an ultra-aggressive gameplan.”
Harding’s Tiryn Frank scored a game-high 18 points, while Hughes added 14. Harding was 4-of-16 from the 3-point line and 4-of-9 from the free-throw line. The Raiders play at Lakeside on Tuesday.
Vlajkovich said the problems for Harding are easy to fix.
“When we concentrate, I always feel confident,” he quipped, “and when we don’t, I don’t.”
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