SPENCERVILLE — For both teams, it was like hitting the rewind button. But Spencerville obviously enjoyed it more than Bath.
The Bearcats’ 62-61 overtime win over Bath in boys basketball on Saturday night was their second overtime victory, along with another win by two points, in their first 10 games of the season.
For the Wildcats, it was the fourth time they’d come close to getting a quality win. They’ve now lost by one point to Spencerville, by two points to Ottawa-Glandorf, by three to Findlay and by four to last year’s Division II state champion Defiance.
Brady Croft scored 20 points and Dakota Prichard had 19 points to lead Spencerville (8-2). Damien Corso had 11 points and Zach Goecke scored 10 on a night when the Bearcats’ scoring came entirely from its five starters.
Andrew Renner and Kaden Sullivan scored 12 points each for Bath (4-8).
Halfway through the second quarter, Bath had a 20-14 lead. But over the next nine minutes, Spencerville went on a 26-7 run and appeared ready to take control of the game with a 40-27 lead with 3 ½ minutes left in the third quarter.
The Bearcats still had a 10-point advantage, 47-37, heading into the fourth quarter. But Bath battled back to take the lead at 53-52 with 1:05 left in regulation on two free throws by Renner.
The Wildcats increased their lead to 55-52 on Kaden Sullivan’s two free throws before Prichard tied it 55-55 with a 3-pointer with 23 seconds left. Renner had a 15-footer for the win in the final seconds but couldn’t get it to fall.
In the overtime, Croft gave the Bearcats the lead with a hoop and a free throw, then Prichard hit four straight free throws to give Spencerville the lead for good.
“We kept battling. We fought through some of the tough stretches and Dak (Prichard) made some big plays down the stretch. It was a good team win. I was proud of our guys,” Spencerville coach Kevin Sensabaugh said.
“We’re battling through some offensive inefficiencies right now. But the good thing about it is we didn’t play great in stretches offensively but we played well defensively for stretches. At times, our transition defense was a little ugly but at least we were efficient offensively.
“Damien Corso did a tremendous job defensively on Renner. Bailey Croft battled his butt off on the boards and scored for us. But the thing I liked was we just fought and fought and fought,” he said.
Bath coach Shawn Allen said, We’re close but we have to get the stars aligned. You can’t fault the kids’ effort.
“We are getting better. It’s just that we’re playing good teams and taking them to the wire. We just have to get over the hump,” he said. “Our kids effort was better than it was last night (against Defiance). We shared the ball. We did some of the things we didn’t do last night.”
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