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Thursday, March 26, 2009
Dayton Christian falls in state semifinal
Defiance Tinora beat Dayton Christian 43-38 Thursday in a Division III state semifinal at Value City Arena.
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Dayton Christian leads Tinora at the half
DC-TINORA WINNER WILL FACE
CLEVELAND CENTRAL CATHOLIC
FOR STATE DIVISION III TITLE
===Nathan Serenius scored 8 points, helping the Dayton Christian Warriors to a 20-18 halftime lead over the Defiance Tinora Rams. No wonder the Rams hold opponents to 38.4 point a game. They pass the ball 10 to 12 times a posession and play strong defense.===
Cleveland Central Catholic looked totally comfortable on the big stage.
Piketon? Shell-shocked.
Led by Anton Grady’s 19 points and Chall Montgomery’s 12 points, the Cleveland Central Catholic Ironmen rolled to an easy 76-52 victory over the Piketon Redstreaks in a Division III semifinal at the boys state basketball tournament at The Ohio State University’s Schottenstein Center on Thursday night, March 26.
“We were very loose today in warmups and I saw it in their eyes,” CCC coach Kevin Noch said. “The boys had the eye of the tiger tonight. They came out ready to play.”
The Ironmen (23-3) will play the Dayton Christian-Defiance Tinora winner for the D-III championship at 2 p.m. Saturday.
CCC leaped to a 34-14 halftime lead. Piketon scored the first 10 points of the third quarter to close within 34-24, but the Redstreaks couldn’t get any closer.
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Let the state boys hoop games begin
One day down, two days to go in the 87th boys state hoop tournament at OSU’s Schottenstein Center:
Thursday’s semifinals
Division IV
Kalida 57, Cleveland Heights Lutheran East 46.
Oak Hill 55, Ada 46.
Division III
Cleveland Central Catholic 76, Piketon 52
Defiance Tinora 43, Dayton Christian 38
Today’s semifinals
Division II
Thurgood Marshall (21-4) vs. Circleville Logan Elm (24-1), 10:45 a.m.
Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary (21-4) vs. Cols. St. Francis DeSales (22-3), 2 p.m.
Division I
Warren G. Harding (23-2) vs. Col. Northland (25-1), 5:15 p.m.
Cin. Princeton (24-1) vs. Toledo St. John’s Jesuit (20-5), 8:30 p.m.
Saturday’s finals
D-IV
Kalida (23-3) vs. Oak Hill (24-2), 10:45 a.m.
D-III
Cleveland Central Catholic (23-3) vs. Defiance Tinora (23-3), 2 p.m.
D-II
5:15 p.m.
D-I
8:30 p.m.
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Catching up with DC coach Chip James
THE DAYTON CHRISTIAN WARRIORS
JUST KEEP ON HURDLING OBSTACLES
Dayton Daily News sports writer Chick Ludwig will be covering Dayton Christian and Thurgood Marshall at the 87th Boys State Basketball Tournament at Value City Arena at the Jerome Schottenstein Center on The Ohio State University Campus in Columbus.
DC (22-4) faces Defiance Tinora (22-3) at 8:30 tonight, Thursday. March 26. The winner plays in the Division III championship game on Saturday at 2 p.m.
Marshall (21-4) meets Circleville Logan Elm (24-1) at 10:45 a.m. Friday, March 27. The winner plays in the Division II championship game on Saturday at 5:15 p.m.
CHIP JAMES OPENING STATEMENT
“It’s my first year at Dayton Christian and we are very excited about the opportunity. We have eight seniors who have dreamed about this since they were little kids. Most of them were five, six or seven years old and really do remember when the team went to state back in 1997. They just couldn’t be more excited to have this opportunity.”
ON THE WARRIORS’ TOUGHNESS
“Since I was a little kid, I wanted to coach. I’m 27 years old now and every day for me is a dream come true to be able to coach, especially here at the varsity level. I’ve always said, if I ever became a coach, I wanted my teams to play the way that I played. I wasn’t all that gifted athletically. I just loved the game. I worked really hard.
“I was told I was a terrible defender coming into high school. I made it my mission. If I’m not going to do anything else well, I’m going to be a great defender. I’m going to be a leader out on the court. I’m going to try to be tough, and really that’s one of the No. 1 things I try to do as a coach is to get these kids to understand that if you play defense, if you’re tough, you can play with anybody on any night no matter what.”
ON HIS BACKGROUND
“I played at Springboro High School for Troy Holtrey. I was a four-year letter winner. My junior and senior years I was co-captain on teams that went 20-0 in the regular season. I was some level of all-state both years. I accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York.
“I played there as a freshman, tore my knee up, ended up calling it quits as a player and transferred back home to Miami University where I was bit with the coaching bug. I started coaching at youth levels and then in 2004 at the age of 23 I was given my first job as head coach at Ridgeville Christian for three years. After taking a year off, this is my first year at Dayton Christian. I’m 27 years old now.”
ON DEFIANCE TINORA
“I really like them. The kids do a great job. We always say the best-coached teams are coached by the players, and you see their kids do a great job of coaching that team as well as the head coach and his staff. They are very well-balanced, very disciplined. You can tell that they take defense personally, which all great teams do. That’s what we try to do.
“We thought we did a nice job this year defensively to hold teams to 47 points per game. And then I see that they hold teams to 38. I don’t think I’ve slept for a minute just thinking about how we’re about to play a team that holds teams under 40. It’s really unbelievable. It’s a credit to their team.
“I think they’re a lot like us. Their kids look like they love to play together and they focus defensively. They do some different things defensively, which we try to do also. I think it’s a great matchup for both teams.”
ON THE WARRIORS’ STYLE
“We’re diverse on both sides. At the beginning of the year, we were all man to man. The backbone of our defense is our man to man, whether it’s full or half court. We’re starting to pick people up more full court a little bit in a variety of ways. Hybrid press, diamond or man to man. We feel like we can use some of our athleticism to get up in the full court and play people.
“If the other team scores or there’s a dead ball, we’re really going to try to make sure we get what we call an A-plus shot. If they miss or if they turn it over, in a change of possession, we’re going to get out and try to run and let our guys do what they do and that’s create for other people or find a way to get a good shot for themselves.
“Some people around the community that don’t really know much about us will say, ‘So are you a run-and-gun team or are you a Big Ten, slow it down and pound it down the middle style team? Well, we’re both. We feel like if there’s a change of possession or there’s the opportunity to run, then absolutely we want to do that.
“We really feel like the game of basketball sometimes can be put in simple terms. The team that gets the most easy shots usually wins. So we want to try to get as many easy shots as we can.”
ON NOT HAVING A GYM
“It’s been an amazing first year. This is the only job in Dayton really that I’ve wanted at this time in my life and my career. I love the Christian community here. I love the kids here. I’ve known a ton of them since they were little kids through the area. But at the same time … here’s your dream job. By the way, you don’t have a facility. You don’t have a practice gym. You don’t have a game gym. I always tell football coaches, ‘Hey, congratulations, you’re the head football coach at such-and-such high school. Oh, by the way, you don’t have a field.’
“If you can imagine that as a coach. It’s such a credit to our kids. I’m sitting here thinking in my head our kids do not have their own gym and they’ve made it to to the state Final Four. It’s really a credit to them to come in and work every day and not complain about what you don’t have. You just do the best with what you’ve got, and just really work hard.
“We practice at Far Hills Community Church, eight miles from school. It creates some obstacles, especially with our kids living all over the Dayton area. You’ve got kids traveling 25 minutes just to go to practice whereas most kids go from their home room down the hallway into the gym. it’s a different dynamic, but we try not to complain about it. We just try to do the best with what we’ve got.”
ON CASEY WEBER’S 90-FOOT SHOT
“When ESPN called and said, ‘We want to send Bob Holtzman out and some producers from GameDay — they want to come to your practice.’ It’s the day before your district final game, which is the biggest game I had ever coached and these guys had ever played in. My initial thought was that’s too much of a distraction. I don’t want to do that. But at the same time, it’s a once in a lifetime thing for our kids and our team.
“So we made the decision to go ahead and do it. I’m thinking, we’ve got eight seniors. We’ve got to be mature enough to handle this. Even though there were cameras and lights and microphones everywhere, the kids really did a great job with all the hoopla of focusing in and understanding that our goals and our potential at hand is much bigger than this little spurt of media attention.
“At the end of the season, I’ll probably look back and say the thing I was most surprised at was our maturity and our ability to take that in stride and not get big-headed about it and just continue to work hard.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHy7Ijie27o
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