Franklin Hgts. rallies late, edges BW, 49-48

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

This one escaped the Golden Eagles’ grasp …

Franklin Heights, which trailed by 8 points at 45–37 two min­utes into the fourth quar­ter, outscored Big Wal­nut 10–3 over the final six min­utes to post a 49–48 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion vic­tory over the host Golden Eagles in the regular-season finale for both teams Fri­day night in Sunbury.

The game went down to the final horn. The Golden Fal­cons caught Big Wal­nut (6–16, 2–12 OCC) at 47–47 on senior wing Aaron Page’s rebound bas­ket off a missed free throw by senior post Tochukwu Olie to com­plete a 3-point play with 1:53 to play. The Golden Eagles took a 1-point, 48–47 lead as senior Zach Laugh­man made one of two free throws with 55 ticks left on the clock.

Fol­low­ing a Franklin Heights (8–14, 5–9 OCC) time out with :45.8 sec­onds remain­ing, the Fal­cons grabbed a 49–48 lead on senior wing Ricardo Har­ris’ rebound bucket with 27 sec­onds to play. The Golden Eagles, call­ing a time out to set up their final play, came up empty-handed as time ran out.

“This game went the way of our sea­son,” BW head coach Eric Myers said. “We played incon­sis­tent bas­ket­ball through­out the sea­son, play­ing well at times then going into spells where we would have trou­ble scoring.”

The Golden Eagles, hit­ting 7 of their first 11 shots, took a 19–12 lead behind senior post Adam Sha­heen who scored 8 of his game-high 21 points in the period. Sopho­more Michael Buck­les chipped in a pair of buck­ets and senior Zach Laugh­man capped the quar­ter with a three-pointer at the buzzer,

Then there was the sec­ond quar­ter where Big Wal­nut could score only 3 points, all three by Sha­heen, on 1-for-7 shoot­ing while turn­ing the ball over 6 times. By the half, the Fal­cons, despite 4-for-13 shoot­ing, held a 25–22 as they outscored the Golden Eagles 11–0 over the final 5 min­utes of the half.

“Franklin Heights went two a 2–3 tri­an­gle defense and our offense was unable to adjust to it,” Myers said. “We came out and made those adjust­ments to open the third quarter.”

Big Wal­nut opened the sec­ond half with a 13–5 run to take a 35–30 lead on Zachary Asher’s lay-in with 4:11 remain­ing in the third quar­ter. Juniors Logan Boyd and Sha­heen buried treys to lig­nite the run. Laugh­man capped the quar­ter by can­ning a 3-pointer from just inside the 10-second line to send the Golden Eagles into the final 8 min­utes with a 40–34 advantage.

Sha­heen kept the Golden Eagle attack rolling by open­ing the final period with a reverse lay-in and a trey for the 45–37 advan­tage … before Big Walnut’s offense stum­bled. The Golden Eagles would turn the ball over on six of its seven pos­ses­sions, count­ing only a Boyd lay-in off a steal, to open the door for the Fal­cons’ last-second victory.

“We had a 3-point and an 8-point quar­ter,” Myers noted. “That’s been our story all sea­son .. you can’t be that incon­sis­tent on offense and expect to win.”

Page led a bal­anced Franklin Heights scor­ing col­umn with 11 points. Olie fol­lowed with 9, Har­ris with 7, and sopho­more Josh Williams and senior Dwight Mitchell with 6 points apiece.

Laugh­man joined Sha­heen in dou­ble fig­ures for Big Wal­nut with 11 points. Boys was next with 5 as only six Golden Eagles found their way into the scor­ing column.

The Golden Fal­cons shot 33.3 per­cent (17-for-51) for the game, includ­ing 5-for-17 (29.4 per­cent) from beyond the arc, while turn­ing the ball over only 9 times.. The Golden Eagles made 47.2 per­cent (17-for-36) of their shots, includ­ing 6-for-15 (40.0 per­cent) in three-point tries while com­mit­ting 18 turnovers. Heights con­verted 10 of 15 free throws (66.7 per­cent) com­pared to BW’s 8 of 12 (66.7 per­cent). The Golden Fal­cons, led by Page’s 11 rebounds, claimed a 35–29 edge on the boards. Sha­heen and Laugh­man cleared off 6 apiece for the Golden Eagles.

Big Wal­nut opens Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict play on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 23 at 1 p.m. at ninth-seeded Lick­ing Heights.

LICKING HEIGHTS 67, BIG WALNUT 49 — The Hor­nets jumped out to a 12–3 opening-quarter lead en route to a 10-double-digit 25–15 half­time advan­tage en route to the non-conference deci­sion last Tues­day (Feb­ru­ary 12) at Pataskala.

Lick­ing Heights (17–4) put the game away with a 24-point third period to open up a 20-point, 49–29 lead going into the final 8 min­utes of the contest.

The Hor­nets were led by John Righter with a game-high 19 points. Babe Mur­phy fol­lowed with 14 points.

Big Wal­nut (6–15) was paced by Adam Sha­heen with 16, Zachary Asher with 10 and Matt Tar­ney with 9 points. Sha­heen and Tar­ney buried three 3-pointers apiece for the Golden Eagles.

The ninth-seeded Hor­nets will square off against the Golden Eagles at 1 p.m. on Sat­ur­day in the first round of the Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict Boys Bas­ket­ball Tour­na­ment at Pataskala.

Posted by Gary Henery on Feb 20 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.