YORK TWP. — Nathan Polidori will never forget the devastating feeling of burying his helmet into the turf after the Buckeye football team lost an epic triple-overtime playoff game against West Geauga in November.
The senior also never will forget the euphoria of Friday, when he was lifted into the air by basketball teammate Mikey Novick and pinned to the gymnasium wall by a frenzied home student section that lost its collective mind in excitement.
Buckeye’s Braeden Stauffer goes up for a shot against Holy Name’s Nick Opinar during the third quarter. (RON SCHWANE / GAZETTE)
Polidori grabbed a rebound, flew down the court at 100 mph and finished a double-pump layup as time expired, giving the Bucks a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me 61-59 victory over Holy Name in a North Ridgeville Division II Sectional championship.
The fourth-seeded Bucks (17-6), who scored five unanswered points in the final 15 seconds, advanced to face No. 1 Bay (20-3) on Thursday.
“It hasn’t really hit me yet, to be honest,” Polidori said with a piece of net in his ear. “It was surreal. I don’t even understand. It’s like the opposite of how I felt after the West Geauga game. That’s how I feel.
“Coach (Tom Harrington) said one of the keys was, ‘How bad do you want it?’ We just wanted it. We flat-out wanted it more, and we just made plays and at the end we came out on top.”
Buckeye tied the game on a Braeden Stauffer 3-pointer with 15 seconds left. The Bucks then nearly forced a miracle turnover when Liam Murray tipped the ball from behind driving Green Wave superstar Dwayne Cohill (26 points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 blocks, 7 turnovers) and out of bounds — the initial call went Buckeye’s way but was overturned — giving way for Polidori’s hair-raising sequence.
After Cohill’s cut down the key was stifled, seventh-seeded Holy Name (8-16) inbounded successfully and got the ball to Sean Hickey (17 points, 13 in fourth quarter). The sharpshooter wanted to hoist a 3-pointer, but sticky defense from Novick forced Hickey to ball-fake and attempt a shot from 17 feet.
Hickey fired off-balance with approximately six seconds left. The ball bounced off rim and to the left, where Polidori (17 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists) snared it while getting a head of steam.
The 5-foot-11 guard sprinted to the other end and blew by the Buckeye bench. He went up, powered through Hickey getting his hand on top of the ball and banked in the off-balance shot of his life.
Game over, crowd goes bonkers and Polidori gets mobbed by 100 of his closest friends.
“I got tunnel vision, I looked at the rim — Coach said I’m going to get a scholarship for as fast as I got down the court — and I ended up finishing,” Polidori said. “I thought I got fouled, but it was going in.”
The Bucks were in desperation mode after Hickey made two free throws with 38 seconds left to put Holy Name up 59-56. Stauffer got a good look from the top of the arc after a bad defensive switch, but the shot went begging and the Green Wave grabbed the rebound.
Holy Name inbounded, but Polidori tipped an ensuring pass. In a right-place, right-time moment, Holy Name point guard Ralph Vance corralled the loose ball and tried to split the middle of the defense.
A split-second later, Murray (11 points, 6 rebounds, 4 steals, 2 blocks) made his biggest play and on a dead sprint stripped the ball clean. A Murray pass toward the student section somehow avoided the outstretched arm of Cohill and found Polidori, who had a driving lane to his left.
Polidori attacked the rim as multiple scrambling defenders collapsed. Polidori then elevated, twisted and fired a back-handed pass to the corner, where a wide-open Stauffer rattled in a stunning 3-pointer.
Tie ballgame.
“We’re down by three, and when Nate went up for the layup, I was like (hands on head),” Stauffer said. “You would think he’d realize we were down by three, and he saw me in the corner. I just made the shot.
“That shot would have haunted me if I didn’t make it. It was pretty nice.”
“At first I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. The ball’s getting stolen,”’ Polidori added. “Then I caught the ball and I was going up and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, we’re down by three,’ so I kicked it to Braeden and he hit a huge shot — huge shot.”
Stauffer and Polidori’s buckets capped a classic back-and-forth battle. Sophomore combo guard Cohill, a rivals.com four-star recruit who tweaked his left knee at the second-quarter horn, was magnificent throughout, while Buckeye countered with 11 first-half points from Nick Wills (13 points), 11 third-quarter points from Polidori and well-timed scores from Murray and Joey Bartinelli (9 points, 4-for-8 shooting).
Buckeye, which committed only three turnovers, led 41-32 in the third quarter but needed a buzzer-beating layup by Polidori to go up 45-39. The Bucks’ matchup 2-3 zone allowed Hickey to cash in three open corner 3-pointers — Hickey and Cohill scored 30 of their team’s 32 second-half points — to start the fourth, and Buckeye trailed 55-52 when Cohill tipped in his own miss.
Wills responded, however, with up-and-under footwork to score inside. Cohill countered with two free throws to make the score 57-54, but Murray banked in a layup at the other end.
That set up the crazy final minute.
“In games like this, players make plays,” Harrington said. “Coaches can try to take all the credit in the world, but we won this game because of our players.”
Those players were all smiles as they climbed a ladder to snip their piece of the net. Such a ceremony is traditionally reserved for league and district championships, but Buckeye won a sectional crown for only the fifth time in school history (1988, ’89, ’93, 2014).
The new challenge will be a Bay team that is averaging north of 80 points, but, as the Bucks proved Friday, anything can and will happen in the tournament.
“I think I’m still in shock,” Murray said, echoing Polidori’s reaction nearly word for word. “I don’t think it’s hit me yet. It’s such a surreal feeling. I’ve really never been this happy in my entire life. To win a sectional championship for the fifth time in school history with this group of guys is amazing.”
Notes
| Cohill was 10-for-13 from the floor, 2-for-4 from 3-point range and 4-for-5 at the foul line. He scored or assisted on 11 of his team’s 12 first-half field goals before pumping in 15 points in the second half.“He’s special,” Harrington said. “He’s going to be as good as he wants to be, and not everybody can say that.”l Cohill (Middleburg Heights), Vance (Cleveland) and Shakif Seymour (Cleveland), a backup post and Toledo football recruit, are the only Holy Name players who attended a public middle school.
l Buckeye did not commit a turnover in the first, second and fourth quarters. |
Contact Albert Grindle at (330) 721-4043 or agrindle@medina-gazette.com.
Buckeye 61, Holy Name 59
North Ridgeville Division II Sectional Final
HOLY NAME 16 11 12 20 — 59
BUCKEYE 10 17 18 16 — 61
Holy Name — Brandon Styers 1-8 0-0 3, Sean Hickey 5-11 4-4 17, Nick Opincar 3-6 0-0 7, Dwayne Cohill 10-13 4-5 26, Ralph Vance 2-5 0-0 4, Shakif Seymour 1-1 0-0 2, Joe Carter 0-0 0-0 0, Joe Petrilla 0-0 0-0 0. TOTALS: 22-44 8-9 59.
Buckeye — Joey Bartinelli 4-8 0-0 9, Liam Murray 5-12 1-2 11, Nick Wills 4-12 5-5 13, Nathan Polidori 5-15 4-7 17, Mikey Novick 1-3 0-0 3, Braeden Stauffer 2-5 2-2 7, Carter Hudak 0-0 0-0 0, Justin Canedy 0-1 1-2 1. TOTALS: 21-56 13-18 61.
3-point goals — Holy Name 7-21 (Hickey 3-6, Cohill 2-4, Opincar 1-2, Styers 1-7, Vance 0-2), Buckeye 6-21 (Polidori 3-7, Novick 1-3, Bartinelli 1-3, Stauffer 1-4, Murray 0-4). Fouled out — None. Rebounds — Holy Name 28 (Opincar 8), Buckeye 23 (Murray 6). Assists — Holy Name 15 (Cohill 7), Buckeye 6 (Polidori 3). Turnovers — Holy Name 14 (Cohill 7), Buckeye 3 (Polidori 2). Fouls — Holy Name 16, Buckeye 11. Records — Holy Name (8-16), Buckeye (17-6).
