CELINA — The scouting report was ominous and so was the result.
Going into Lima Senior’s 92-60 boys basketball win at Celina on Saturday night, the Bulldogs’ coach Jay Imwalle noticed something different from most teams about Lima Senior.
“Usually you find a weak link in the chain somewhere. There’s no weak link there. That is a very good basketball team,” he said after the game.
Lima Senior, ranked No. 2 in the state in Division I, extended its record to 18-0 behind 43 points from Xavier Simpson, including nine 3-point buckets. As a team, Lima Senior hit 13 3-pointers.
Jarius Ward and Jaylin Thomas each added 15 points for the Spartans.
Celina (9-10) got 24 points from Caleb Hoying and 16 points from Christopher Berry.
Lima Senior led 45-36 at halftime but turned up the defensive pressure in the second half and was ahead by 51 points, 89-48, when the bench took over midway through the fourth quarter.
The Spartans forced 28 turnovers in the game and got 14 of them in each half. But it wasn’t until the second half that Lima Senior’s defense took control of the game, coach Quincey Simpson said.
‘Our defense was terrible in the first half. We gave up a lot of transition opportunities. Our guys were jogging back on defense,” he said. “We came in at halftime and explained to them it was imperative we pay attention to details. We didn’t do that in the first half.”
That detail-oriented approach led to a 16-2 Lima Senior run, which turned a nine-point halftime lead into a 61-38 advantage four minutes into the third quarter.
From there, Lima Senior was off to the races and outscored the Bulldogs 22-4 in the third quarter.
“We were a lot more focused, a lot more energized, some shots started falling and we made those guys a lot more uncomfortable in the half court,” Simpson said.
It ended up being quite a contrast to Friday night’s 41-24 win over Findlay when the Trojans slowed the game down.
“It’s fun to get out and play the way you want to,” Simpson said. “But we’re comfortable playing a lot of different ways. We want it to be a track race. I tell my kids we’re track kids playing basketball.”
Eventually that approach wore down Celina, which came into the game on a five-game winning streak.
“I’m happy with the way our kids played. You expend all that energy in the first half and we just ran out of gas,” Inwalle said. “They’re so much deeper and physically stronger but our kids played hard.”
Lima Senior shot 51 percent on field goals, including 55 percent in the second half. Celina was 21 of 36 on field goals in the first, second and fourth quarters but was only 2 of 7 in the third quarter.
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