OOOOOOhhhhhh my, what a win
He looks like he belongs back in that era.
He looks like he belongs anywhere except a girls high school basketball game.
But there he is at every Orrville Lady Red Riders game – home and away – a loyal and knowledgeable hoops fan who bellows out "OOOOOOhhhhhh," throughout each game, when the Riders are riding high, in a thunderous voice that ricochets off the walls inside every gymnasium and penetrates deeply into the ears of everybody congregated within.
It's likely it stands for the O in Orrville, or maybe he just has a limited vocabulary.
Either way, plenty of "OOOOOOhhhhhhs" rang out from the visitor's bleachers, Tuesday, Dec. 20. inside the Dungeon, but at the very end all he had left was a disappointed "aaawww," as the Lady Knights held off Hannah Plybon and the Red Riders 41-40, to move to 5-0 on the season and 3-0 against Ohio Cardinal Conference opponents.
But he's lucky he could muster any kind of sound at all since this was a hold-your-breath, heart-in-the-throat kind of ending which saw two of the most talented players in the state of Ohio go one-on-one in the waning moments to decide the winner.
"That was intense," said West Holmes sixth-year head coach Lisa Patterson, after watching Orrville try to inbound the ball underneath its own basket with only 12.7 seconds showing on the clock, and trailing by one, following a West Holmes turnover. "That's what it's all about."
Her third inbound attempt found Plybon out beyond the three-point arc on the right side, and it brought Lady Knights sophomore sensation Laina Snyder out on defense.
The Orrville junior started to her left, faked back right, and shifted into her drive to the basket, but as she crossed her dribble, Snyder got a finger on the ball, causing it to go off the side of Plybon's foot.
In a flash, Wright was on the floor and on top of the ball, as Patterson called timeout before Plybon could force a tie-up, preserving the victory and silencing the stranger in the stands while the home side of the bleachers erupted.
"Laina didn't draw the assignment of guarding Hannah, Paiten [Strother] did most of the night," explained Patterson afterward. "But I knew that chances are pretty likely they're going to go to her so I gave Laina that assignment and I thought she did a tremendous job of denying her."
But for the first 31:48 it was the athletically gifted Strother who did everything she could to deny Orrville's 2010-11 Division III first-team All-Ohio selection, holding Plybon to 17 points, on five-of-10 shooting, while coming away with a steal and forcing eight turnovers.
"I like it, because she's the best player on their team and it's my job to stop her," said Strother, afterward.
However, at the beginning of the game nobody could stop Strother on the offensive end, as the 5-foot-8 guard unloaded two big three-pointers from the left corner to help West Holmes race out to a 10-3 lead.
Following Strother's second trey, 5-foot-6 sophomore point guard Emily Molnar forced a turnover and found Strother open for another triple-try, which missed from outside the right side of the arc, but was cleaned up by Snyder, who put it back up and in, extending the West Holmes lead to 12-3.
"The first half I was feeling it," explained Strother, who watched 5-foot-8 Lady Knights freshman Alex Starr bury a jumper from just inside the left side of the arc to make it 14-3 in favor of West Holmes. "I've been working on my shot a lot and I was just on tonight."
But Orrville would score the final four points of the opening quarter – with Plybon going coast-to-coast for a layup and Davault hitting a curling jumper from left of the free throw line – sending both teams into quarter number two with West Holmes leading by a touchdown, 14-7, and bringing the first "OOOOOhhhhhh," of the night raining down from the stands.
"Every time we've scouted them, they've pushed the ball up and down the floor on teams and we knew we had to take that away," explained Patterson, whose team stayed patient throughout the opening quarter, methodically passing the ball around the perimeter and finding the open shot. "We felt our half-court defense and our half-court offense would have an advantage and it showed."
Plybon got six quick points at the beginning of the second period, banking a shot in from inside the circle and completing the old-fashioned three-point play from the free throw line, after drawing contact from Snyder, before rainbowing in a deep three from the right side to cut the Lady Knights lead to 16-13.
West Holmes answered with a stick back from Strother, a split at the free throw line by junior guard Rachelle Morrison, and a jumper from inside the circle from Molnar, to push back out to a 20-14 advantage.
Plybon used a little hop, skip and a jump to draw contact while sinking another bank shot, completing the and-one before knocking down a jumper from just right of the circle a few minutes later, to bring Orrville back to within one, at 20-19.
Morrison answered with a three-pointer from the left corner and Strother knocked down her third three-point bomb from the same spot, before 5-foot-10 sophomore Shamaya Sims hit a stick back jumper at the buzzer to make the score 26-21 in favor of the Lady Knights, going into halftime.
"Paiten had the hot hand tonight," said Molnar, as her backcourt teammate went into the locker room with a team-leading nine points. "She just kept hitting those corner shots that she loves so we tried to get that to her.
"It gets us so pumped. When things are going right, when somebody's doing great things, it just fuels the fire for us to get motivated and keep going."
After ending the first-half scoring for Orrville, Sims got it started for the Red Riders in the second, drawing contact from Snyder and sinking her free throws to close the gap to 26-23.
Then, at the 5:32 mark of the third quarter Davault hit from outside the top of the arc, knotting the game up for the first time, 26-26.
"OOOOOhhhhhh," bellowed the super-fan, but Orrville head coach Mark Alberts explained later, "I really thought we battled back. The problem is we dug a hole like that and then you work like crazy to get it where it's tied."
Leaving the Red Riders running on empty as Molnar banked in a bucket from an impossible angle along the right baseline, senior forward Mariah Oswalt turned a drop pass from Wright into an underneath layup, and Snyder took a breakaway pass to lay one up and in from the right side, giving West Holmes a quick 32-26 lead.
They were up 32-29 heading into the final quarter, but at the 5:19 mark of the fourth, Orrville completed another run to take its first lead, 35-34, as Sims sunk a pair of free throws.
"OOOOOhhhhhh."
But again West Holmes answered immediately as Snyder threw up a wild shot from the top of the key and got it to go, before coming back with a layup on the left side to put the Lady Knights out in front 38-35 and complete her fifth straight double-double to start the season, finishing with 10 points and a monstrous, game-high 17 rebounds.
Strother would drop in her 10th and 11th points from the charity stripe, before Orrville junior guard Abby Reusser canned a three from the left corner, and the Orrville defense trapped Molnar to force a turnover on the ensuing inbound, leaving the Red Riders under their own basket with 12.7 seconds remaining.
"I think maybe we were a little gun shy at the beginning," said Alberts afterward, as he watched Orrville outscore West Holmes in every quarter but the first. "It's a shame we couldn't get a shot there at the end. We knew what they were going to do defensively at the end, we just didn't react to it.
"But you've got to give them credit, they had a good defensive game plan. We needed one of our other girls to make a shot or two here and there. We had some good looks at the basket that the girls who shot them didn't make."
Aside from Plybon, the rest of the Red Riders shot only 23 percent from the field, without any other player reaching double figures.
Meanwhile, the Lady Knights shot 40 percent for the game.
"I think it shows you we are capable of having different kids score," said Patterson after Strother became the third player in as many games to join Snyder with double-figures in the scoring column – following Morrison and Molnar. "I am very excited for the day that we get three players in double-figures. It's coming."
And if the Lady Knights can get into that kind of offensive rhythm before they play the Red Riders again, on Jan. 21, there just might be a loud, "UH-OOOOOhhhhhh," that comes out of the stands inside the Bob Knight Gymnasium.
Published: December 20, 2011
