BRUNSWICK — Get ready for the biggest Medina County boys basketball showdown in more than a decade.
Medina vs. Brunswick. Archrivals playing their guts out in a sold-out, one-sided gym. Plenty of deserved hype. A three-way tie with Elyria atop the Greater Cleveland Conference will be broken.
Short of a winner-take-all scenario, tonight can’t get much better.
“I don’t have to really tell (the players) much,” Blue Devils coach Joe Mackey said. “If they can’t get motivated for this game, then they don’t have a ticker.”
If anything has been proven over the course of the season-long GCC emotional roller coaster, Brunswick (15-4, 9-2) and the Bees (14-5, 9-2) have plenty of heart.
Both teams lost nail-biters at Elyria (14-4, 9-2) but have rebounded with resolve. The undersized Blue Devils have continued to win behind their 3-point heavy offense (averaging 11.1 per game), while the defending Copley Division I District champion Bees have put 5-5 midseason stretch behind him behind 7-foot-1 star Jon Teske.
Brunswick is searching for its first league title since 1966 and hasn’t been in first place this late in the season since 2007. Medina is two years removed from losing its chance at the Northeast Ohio Conference Valley Division championship, its last league title coming in 2010.
As Judge Mills Lane used to say: Let’s get it on.
“First of all, we don’t hate each other like we used to,” Bees coach Chris Hassinger said with a smirk. “I just think it’s pretty cool that the schools with homegrown kids have a chance to win it this year, and that doesn’t always happen in our league. It’s pretty exciting to be in this position.”
Medina won the first meeting 61-56 on Jan. 5 behind 23 points and 10 rebounds from Teske. The Blue Devils made 14-of-33 3-pointers — they took just 13 shots inside the arc — and had two scoreless possessions down by two points in the final 15 seconds.
Teske (16.5 ppg) again will loom large, though only Hassinger knows if the Bees will stick with the matchup 2-3 zone they’ve ridden recently. Small forward Luke Schaefer (6-3, 15.8), shooting guard Jackson Sartain (6-0, 12.0) and point guard Ben Geschke (6-1, 8.2) also will start, while Hassinger could choose third guard Colin Szumski (5-11, 4.0) instead of power forward Jimmy Clark (6-4, 2.7) for defensive purposes. Jimmy Daw (6-4, 4.7) is off the bench.
Brunswick will start All-Gazette point guard Michael Quiring (5-10, 14.7), forward Kevin Simmons (6-0, 14.5), forward Zach Cebula (6-0, 12.9), center Aaron Badowski (6-6, 8.9) and shooting guard Kyle Goessler (5-10, 6.2). Austin Mick (5-11, 1.4) and Zak Zografos (6-4, 2.2) are the sixth and seventh men.
Expect plenty of offense, as the Bees (66.6) and Blue Devils (61.8) are 1-2 in the county. The keys will be Brunswick defending Teske and the Bees contesting Brunswick’s bevy of shooters.
“It’s awesome feeling because these are the points in the season you live for, you know what I mean?” Schaefer said. “This is the fun part of the season.”
That feeling is mutual, as the Blue Devils know what’s at stake.
“We’ve got to come in prepared and focused,” Simmons said. “We have to execute better than they do, and, if we do that, we should be fine.”
Chad Grant contributed to this story.