It was a night that featured delays for blood and gum, tension, a last-second basket in regulation and a player finally listening to a coach became a hero.
Firestone’s 44-39 overtime victory over Archbishop Hoban Wednesday night at Firestone High School had a bit of everything.
Tayelor McCalister, who led all scorers with 20 points, was thrilled the Falcons found a way to beat the state-ranked Knights.
“It was so much anxiousness and it was overwhelming. We worked so hard in practice ... we did not know what to expect because Hoban was better than last year and they beat St. V and we played terrible against them,” McCalister said. “It is an amazing feeling. All my family was there and I was ecstatic.
“We are a team that teams should be scared of ... we are coming, we are coming.”
The game had so many bizarre twists and turns.
Just getting to the overtime period was dramatic enough.
Trailing 36-34, the Falcons got the ball at halfcourt.
“We decided to get Shaia [Horton] the ball and being a senior we would let her decide what to do,” Falcons coach Audley McGill said. “We also designed the play to get the ball if we needed to to Tina [Johnson].”
As was typical of the night — things did not go exactly as planned.
Horton launched a high-arching 3-point shot deep from the right wing which was off the mark. But Johnson went to the glass and put the rebound in just before the buzzer went off to send the game into overtime.
“I did not expect to get the rebound and when I did I had to get my composure. I was scared time would run out and I just put it up. I was just relieved because we had more time to put it together and get a win,” Johnson said.
In overtime, the Falcons (13-4) outscored the Knights 8-3. McCalister and Horton, who finished with 14 points, stepped up to the foul line and combined to make 7-of-8 shots.
McCalister, who made 8-of-9 free throws, took a tip from McGill by using the technique he developed when he played basketball.
“I was struggling with my free-throw shooting and changed it several times and it really wasn’t working for me,” McCalister said. “He [McGill] gave me a technique to use — two dribbles to the side and three dribbles in the middle and told me to keep my elbow in.”
The game started late for two reasons — it was Senior Night and then the game was delayed 10 minutes as school officials were scrambling to figure out how to remove gum from underneath one of the baskets.
Later, there were long delays to clean blood off the floor and another with 46 seconds left in regulation because of problems with the team foul count in the score books.
The Knights (15-2) got 17 points from Megan Donohue and eight from Janaya Feaster, who fouled out in the fourth quarter.
“If we could have got ahead it would have changed the way we played the game, but we couldn’t and that’s a credit to them,” Hoban coach Scott Callaghan said.
Read the high school blog at http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/varsity_letters/
