Boys basketball: Medina escapes with win over Wadsworth

WADSWORTH — The Medina boys basketball team was on the road, but its home pregame hype video would have to get a lot longer than it already is for any plays from this one to warrant appearing on it. It was rarely pretty Tuesday evening, but the Bees did enough of what they had to do, especially when they most had to do it, to pull out a 41-38 non-league victory over Medina County rival Wadsworth on the Grizzlies' senior night. "Ugly," was the one-word summation of backup forward Luke Webb, who was instrumental in Medina improving to 13-7 with eight points and a team-high five rebounds. "Coach (Chris) Hassinger always says sometimes you have to win ugly. Even if you win by one point, it's still a win." The disciplined Grizzlies (7-15), who started five of their six seniors, jumped to an 11-2 lead and were up 14-6 after one period, 18-17 at halftime and 28-23 with 3:30 to go in the third before Medina scored the last seven points of that quarter and first five of the fourth to take a seven-point lead with 6:02 to play. The 6-foot-5 Webb started the spurt with a putback before getting one of the Bees' five steal-and-scores on the night. Brody Kopkas followed with a 3-pointer for his only points, Webb added a corner three to make it 32-28 and a three-point play by Ryan Harubin gave Medina its biggest lead of the extremely slow-paced game. "Luke Webb was our MVP tonight," Hassinger said. "It's awesome when a kid's minutes are all over the place and he's still committed to the team. He's just a great team player." Webb's five boards were even more significant considering the rest of Medina's players somehow combined for just four, but he downplayed his contributions. "Coach Hassinger always says shoot with confidence, so I tried to shoot like I was in practice," he said. "I know a lot of teams overlook me because I'm not a big scorer, but I try to make my impact by getting second chances for our guys." While the Bees' nine rebounds were shocking enough, they also had just four assists. Until small forward Harubin (10 points) scored off a pass from point guard Beckett Miller with 30 seconds to play, 6-6 center Garrett Myers (7 points) had Medina's only assists, all of which led to 3-pointers. Wadsworth, which ran 1:15 off the clock on the first possession of the game and didn't play a ton faster the rest of the way, did what it needed to do to get ahead and didn't abandon its game plan when it got behind. Behind a pair of 3-pointers and a jumper from senior Grady Hughes, who had all eight of his points in the fouth quarter, the Grizzlies closed to 37-36 with 2:18 to play and got a turnover to get the ball back, but Medina's Bishop Burch got an open-court steal that led to a layup with 1:35 remaining. "We needed it and I got it," the Bees shooting guard said. Medina got a stop, then expanded its lead to 41-36 when Harubin made a reverse layup off Miller's pass, but Wadsworth's Kyle Schmeltzer (11 points, 6 assists) hit a pair of free throws with 25.9 ticks on the clock and the Bees committed a turnover with 14 seconds left. Down three, Wadsworth used its final timeout with 11 seconds to go and Medina wisely fouled 28 feet from the basket with 1.1 on the clock. The best the Grizzlies could do was a hurried heave by Hughes that failed to draw iron. "It stinks," said three-year starter Hughes, who has missed a large chunk of his senior season due to injuries to both hamstrings. "We really wanted this one because it's a big rivalry." As has been the case in a number of games this season, Wadsworth stayed close but failed to win down the stretch. Bad turnovers at bad times in the final three quarters were a large reason for that. "Turnovers killed us," Hughes said. "Stupid ones, too. They were really unforced ones. "The first half of the season was the same thing. We played a lot of teams tough and couldn't finish the game. That's been the story for the last three years." Wadsworth, which also got 10 points and five boards from senior center Jimmy Galvin and six points and four rebounds from sophomore Landon Oaks while doubling up Medina on the glass, shot .500 on the night (14-for-28) but didn't shoot much, especially over the final three quarters, when the Grizzlies scored 24 points on 9-for-16 fom the field and 4-for-4 at the line. Part of that was due to good defense by Medina and part of it was due to Wadsworth being in no hurry to shoot. "It was a battle," the Bees' Burch said. "They wanted to come in and kill us on their senior night, but we held our own and finished the game." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Medina 41, Wadsworth 38 MEDINA 6 11 13 11 — 41 WADSWORTH 14 4 10 10 — 38 Medina — Ryan Harubin 5-0-10, Brody Kopkas 1-0-3, Garrett Myers 2-3-7, Bishop Burch 1-0-2, Beckett Miller 2-0-5, Donte Cargill 2-0-4, Luke Webb 3-1-8, Korde Carey 1-0-2. TOTALS: 17-4-41. Wadsworth — Payton Salzwimmer 1-0-3, Jack Allen 0-0-0, Jimmy Galvin 4-2-10, Isaac Byers 0-0-0, Roy Hoertz 0-0-0, Kyle Schmeltzer 3-4-11, Grady Hughes 3-0-8, Vinney Terranova 0-0-0, Landon Oaks 3-0-6, Lucas McDermitt 0-0-0. TOTALS: 14-6-38. 3-point goals — Miller, Kopkas, Webb, Hughes 2, Salzwimmer, Schmeltzer. Rebounds — Medina 9 (Webb 5), Wadsworth 18 (Galvin 5). Assists — Medina 4 (Myers 3), Wadsworth 9 (Schmeltzer 6). Records — Medina (13-7), Wadsworth (7-15). Junior varsity — Medina 60, Wadsworth 46 (M: Tyson Riffle 18, Brody Robison 17, Owen Sturm 10; W: Henry Hoover 14, Tyler Marino 11).