Winter's rough for area roadways. Minor potholes shake drivers up. On occasion, though, a crater has appeared, making life miserable for many.
Winter’s rough for area roadways. Minor potholes shake drivers up. On occasion, though, a crater has appeared, making life miserable for many.
Sports teams also deal with bumps in the road, occasional craters causing major damages. One such case is the Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin boys basketball team.
The Lions have had ups and downs this season, but recently lost their top player, Evan Duggar, to a knee injury. This forced the coaching staff, led by Head Coach Pat Vuyancih, to alter the team’s approach.
Feb. 20, the Lions capped their regular season facing a talented group of Tigers from Twinsburg. Even Coach Vuyancih was unable to attend due to illness, but the Lions’ total team effort kept them into the game.
Though NDCL fell a point short of winning, 52-51, it was a thrilling contest of will and skills.
The Lions got the attention of the Tigers early. In taking a 7-0 lead over the first 4:49 of the game, packs of Lions flew to the ball no matter where it was on the floor. In going zero-of-five over the first four minutes, confidence was in favor of the hosts, but Twinsburg was typically solid.
Josh Lee caught fire from 3-point range late in the first period and early in the second to propel his team to a 28-24 lead at the half. Lee dropped home 16 first-half points, including four 3-pointers.
Missing Duggar limits scoring like that for the Lions, but Interim Coach Steve Steinmetz got the most out of the rest of his team all night long.
It was in the final moments of the fourth period that their efforts simply fell a point short.
Senior guard Jaxon Mangelluzzi gave NDCL its last lead of the night with 3:38 left by stealing the ball in the paint from a shocked Tiger who’d been heading to an open layup.
Mangelluzzi went the length of the court the other way to provide a 47-46 Lions lead.
But Jayden Patton scored his second hoop of the night with 2:33 to play to regain the lead for Twinsburg (16-6), and Cam Wilkerson put home a layup off of a fast break chance to boost the lead to 52-48 with 40 seconds left.
With both coaches playing a good game of chess in the last 40 seconds, Mangelluzzi took an inbounds pass and nailed another 3-pointer with 1.2 ticks left. But after yet another timeout for strategy purposes, Twinsburg successfully inbounded the ball to end the game.
“I’m just really proud of how our kids played tonight against a very good team,” Coach Steinmetz said. “The kids play hard all the time. We played maybe our best defense of the year in the second half.
“Losing Evan has hurt, for sure, but the team mentality for our kids has grown a lot since he went down. Of course we’ve had to make a few changes in how we do things, but when it comes to effort, these kids are just fantastic.”
Lee’s hot hand in the first half led to his 19-point night, proving how well the Lions tightened things up in the second half.
Both teams took decent care of the basketball overall, each having just 10 turnovers. Six of Twinsburg’s miscues came on steals from the lightning-fast Lions defense, led by Mangelluzzi’s trio of thefts. He also provided much-needed scoring, leading the team with 13 points.
Connor Hernan and Angelo Tamburrino each added nine, and Hernan snared 12 rebounds; indeed, the Lions won that battle, 29-19. Thirteen of those caroms came on the offensive glass for NDCL, ending its regular season at 10-12 overall.
After the Lions got a quick start, it was the Tigers who got in the last swipe of the claws to end the regular season. The teams, however, were well matched.
NDCL would travel to West Geauga for a tournament game Feb. 27.
