First Posted: 3/26/2015
COLUMBUS — Lima Central Catholic stayed on its feet after taking a hit that would have knocked many teams off its feet.
Then it weathered a storm that would have blown away a lot of teams.
And because they could do those things, the Thunderbirds held on for a 55-50 win over Dayton Chaminade-Julienne on Thursday night in a Division III boys basketball state semifinal at the Value City Arena.
That win set up a rematch with Cleveland Villa Angela-St. Joseph, the team the Thunderbirds beat for last year’s D-III title, at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
Villa Angela-St. Joseph won 62-34 over Columbus Eastmoor Academy in the other Division III semifinal.
Dantez Walton scored 16 points, pulled down 14 rebounds and blocked three shots to lead LCC (26-2). Jake Williams had 14 points and 12 rebounds and Josh Dixon scored 11 points.
LCC’s chances of playing in the state championship game for a second year in a row looked uncertain when point guard Tre Cobbs went out of the game with his third dislocated shoulder in the last five weeks just 64 seconds after the opening tip.
LCC responded by jumping out to a 32-20 halftime lead and was up 44-30 after three quarters.
But Chaminade-Julienne went on a 15-2 run at the start of the fourth quarter to pull within one point, 46-45, with 3:11 to play.
LCC hung on, though, and will play for its third state championship in the last six seasons on Saturday.
“When Tre went down I was waiting to see how our kids reacted. We’ve got a bunch of gritty kids,” LCC coach Frank Kill said.
Walton said, “When Tre went down, someone had to step up. And not just one person stepped up. The whole team just came out and showed what we needed.”
Cobbs first injured his left shoulder against Celina in a regular-season game, then hurt it again in a district semifinal against Coldwater and then for the third time on Thursday.
“It happened to us multiple times before, so like Coach Kill said it was a next man up mentality,” Dixon said.
Inside scoring, rebounding and defense were three of the keys for LCC.
Chaminade-Julienne (22-7) got 18 points from post player Myo Baxter-Bell and 12 from guard Alan Vest. But they combined to hit only 13 of 34 shots. And LCC had a 40-24 rebounding edge, led by Walton and Williams.
“Sixteen and 14 and 14 and 12 from your two big guys inside, that’s a formula for success,” Kill said.
The Thunderbirds had only one field goal in the fourth quarter but were able to survive the storm.
“I’ve been around teams where it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we can’t stop the bleeding.’ But I thought our guys did a great job of withstanding the storm. We knew it was going to calm down at some point,” Kill said.
“For 32 good, hard minutes our guys never quit,” he said.
Thursday night’s win came in a rematch of a regular-season game. LCC won that game 64-54 on Feb. 10.
Cobbs scored 25 points that night and held C-J point guard Christian Montague scoreless in the second half. But neither Cobbs or Montague were around at the end this time after Montague left the game shortly before halftime with a hip injury.
Kill said playing Chaminade-Julienne for a second time might have helped his team.
“I would say it was an advantage. To have that mindset, ‘Hey, we did it once,’ was definitely an advantage,” he said.
