OTTAWA – Rivalries don’t have expiration dates. They don’t get stale.
So, even though Ottawa-Glandorf’s 68-54 win over Lima Central Catholic in boys basketball on Monday night looked like a mismatch on paper, and maybe a couple of times on the court, it was something for the Titans to celebrate and enjoy.
“Any win against LCC is a good win,” O-G coach Tyson McGlaughlin said after the Titans broke a five-game losing streak against the Thunderbirds.
Most of the talent that produced two Division III state championships and a state runner-up trophy for LCC in the previous three seasons is gone.
Ottawa-Glandorf (10-0) came into the game ranked No. 3 in Division II in the season’s first Associated Press state rankings, which came out Monday afternoon.
Lima Central Catholic (2-9) was the first team in the OG-LCC series to come into a game between the two schools in boys basketball with a sub-.500 record since the 1995-96 season. The last time O-G arrived at a game against the Thunderbirds below .500 was in the 1994-95 season.
Ottawa-Glandorf set out to establish its big men, 6-foot, 6-inch Jake Dible and 6-foot, 4-inch Jay Kaufman, and made good on that plan throughout the game.
Kaufman had 21 points and 10 rebounds. Dible had 14 points and eight rebounds and guard Owen Hiegel scored 15 points.
And when LCC was still within six points, at 36-30, early in the second half the Titans turned up the defensive pressure.
Ottawa-Glandorf forced 11 LCC turnovers in the final 16 minutes, several of which it turned into points.
“The defensive pressure got us some transition baskets and got the game up and down, which we needed to do. We talked about getting the speed of the game up to try to get some looks in the open court,” McGlaughlin said.
Mark Janowski, LCC’s 6-foot, 8-inch junior center, battled the two O-G big guys and scored a career-best 21 points. Thomas Williams and Ron Banks had eight points each.
“I thought for the majority of the game we played as tough as could possibly play against a really good O-G team,” Lima Central Catholic coach Frank Kill said.
“We tried to go inside and I thought Janowski played as good a game as he has played all year against two of the best big men in our area. We’re making progress. We just have to put it together. Right now it’s a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and we’ve got about half of it put together,” he said.
Ottawa-Glandorf came into Monday night’s game after needing overtime to beat Van Wert last Friday night and struggling offensively for much of a 50-38 win over Bluffton on Saturday night.
So shooting 55 percent (20 of 36) in the first three quarters Monday night before tailing off a little in the fourth quarter was the sort of thing the Titans were looking for.
“We got on our guys pretty hard after Saturday night. We were not pleased at all with the way we played. We told them that in very nice way and I thought they responded,” McGlaughlin said.
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