First Posted: 2/27/2015
CELINA — Celina gave its home crowd exactly what it came to see.
Celina pounded the ball inside en route to a 62-48 boys basketball victory over Elida to capture the outright Western Buckeye League title.
It marked Celina’s first WBL boys basketball title since 2011. Celina has 17 WBL boys basketball titles, the most of any school. Ottawa-Glandorf is second with 15.
“It feels great,” Celina’s Logan DeLong said.
Celina ends it regular season 19-3, 9-0 in the WBL. Elida is 9-11, 4-5 in the WBL.
“It’s a great feeling,” Celina coach Chris Bihn said. “I’m really proud of these kids and happy for them.”
DeLong led Celina with 24 points, 21 coming in the first half. Ryan Hoyng added 15 points, while Caleb Hoyng scored 10.
“I give credit to my teammates for finding me,” DeLong said. “Ryan Hoyng finds me all over the place.”
Austin Allemeier led Elida with 19 points. Baylen Stinson had nine points.
“That (Celina) was a team that was fighting for an undisputed league championship and you could tell,” Elida coach Denny Thompson said. “They brought a lot of energy and played really, really well.”
Elida concentrated its defensive efforts on Hoyng, one of the top players in northwest Ohio. Elida even flashed a little triangle-and-two.
But Celina countered by jamming the ball inside, mostly to Delong in the first half.
Celina took the lead to stay 15-14 on a DeLong layup with 1:55 left in the first quarter. Celina led 22-16 after the first quarter.
Celina ran off a 12-0 spurt in the second quarter to pull out to a 41-23 lead. During that run, Hoyng hit two layups and a 3-pointer. DeLong scored on a fast-break layup.
By the half, Celina had pulled out to a 44-25 lead.
Celina scored 13 of its 16 first-half baskets on layups. One basket came on a 5-footer and two came on 3-pointers.
“We came out and tried to do some things to get their perimeter people covered, and at the same time, bring more of a presence toward Ryan (Hoyng), but it didn’t work out like we thought it might if we brought the energy that we needed,” Thompson said.
DeLong continually got the ball in the paint, turned and flipped in a layup.
“When you catch the ball where he was catching it, it’s pretty easy,” Thompson said.
Added Bihn, “With Elida, they don’t have much inside right now. They have a couple of young kids and I’ll tell you those kids are going to be good, but they are young and they are going to be up or down. Tonight I don’t think they played real good defense. … We wanted to go inside as much as we could.”
Celina’s lead grew to 32, 61-29, after three quarters. Elida scored the first 19 points of the final quarter to get within 61-48 with 1:13 to go, but the WBL trophy was being engraved by then.
Celina won the boards, 30-18. Celina shot 63 percent from the field, while Elida hit 38 percent. DeLong also had eight rebounds, while Ryan Hoyng had nine.
“We wanted no share at all. We came out and did what we had to do,” DeLong said. “It happened and it’s a great feeling.”
