CJ Bailey led Tipp with 15 points despite in-your-face defense by Sidney’s Tanner Snider. (Press Pros Feature Photos By Julie McMaken Wright)
The Red Devils hold on in the fourth quarter and are headed to a showdown with Vandalia Butler next Friday that will determine who wins the Miami Valley League championship.
Tipp City, OH – The boys basketball tournament draw is Sunday. Every high school basketball player and coach will look at the bracket. They will assess their team’s chances.
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They will dream of a deep run.
But for Tippecanoe, Sidney and Vandalia Butler, the final two weeks of the regular season mean quite a bit more. All three teams entered Friday’s games determined to win at least a share of the Miami Valley League championship.
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Two teams are left standing.
Tipp eliminated Sidney from the race by doing just enough in the fourth quarter for a 54-49 victory and a second win this season over the Yellow Jackets.
Tipp improved to 17-3 and 14-2 in the league. Butler won 53-51 at Stebbins to improve to 16-4 and 14-3 in the league. Tipp plays Piqua (2-18, 2-14) Saturday night. Assuming the Red Devils win, their home game on February 14 against Butler will determine one of two things.
If Tipp wins, it wins the league outright for the second straight year and for the third time in the six years since the MVL formed in 2019. If Butler wins, the teams will share the title and be the first for the Aviators.
Tippecanoe’s Larkin Thomas scored 12 important points, including these two against Sidney Tanner Snider.
“What we’re telling the kids every time is let’s go win a league title,” Tipp coach Brock Moon said. “Then we’ll worry about everything else.”
Sidney (15-5, 13-4) finished first in the Valley Division, but that’s not much consolation when the goal was to win the program’s third overall league title and first since 2021-22.
“We really wanted to win,” Sidney senior guard A’zon Steele said. “Our main goal towards the end of the season was to win league, and we came really, really close to it. There was a couple flaws we had in the game that could have changed it completely. That late rebound at the end really hurt us.”
Tipp led 51-49 with 40 seconds left when Preston Zumwalt’s missed free throw hung on the rim long enough for teammate Jackson Davis to get into position to grab the offensive rebound and rob Sidney of a chance to tie or take the lead.
“Offensive rebounds – it’s been a story all year,” Sidney coach John Willoughby said.
Davis passed quickly to sophomore Larkin Thomas in the backcourt. With 34 seconds left, Thomas made both free throws for a four-point lead. Sidney didn’t score again.
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“It wasn’t pretty, and a lot of ours haven’t been pretty, but I thought it was a gritty performance for our guys,” Moon said. “We struggled at times, but I thought at the end, we made some big plays to pull it out.”
Despite the loss, the Yellow Jackets got to celebrate seniors Steele and Julius Spradling each scoring their 1,000th point. Steele scored a game-high 20 points and Spradling scored eight.
That battle to score inside was difficult as Tippecanoe’s Colin Turner tries to tally over Sidney’s Kaleb Lee.
“They put a lot of time into it and I’m happy for them,” Willoughby said. “Disappointed in the outcome. But I thought we played a pretty good game tonight.”
The season trend for both teams shaped up like a 3-point shooting contest. Tipp shoots more 3-pointers than any team in the league at a rate of 24.7 a game. Sidney is second at 19.8. The Red Devils make 32.2% of theirs. The Jackets make 35%.
In the first meeting, Sidney started hot and made 9 of 19, including four from Jayce Daniel. Tipp made 7 of 22.
But after the first quarter when Davis opened the game with two threes and the Red Devils made four in all to take a 14-12 lead, the 3-point shooting became less and less of a factor. Sidney made 3 of 13 (23.1%), all by Steele, and Tipp made 7 of 24 (29.2%). Daniel scored nine points but spent most of the second half on the bench in foul trouble. All of Kaleb Lee’s 10 points came in the low post.
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Tipp jumped to a 14-4 lead before Sidney closed the first quarter with an 8-0 run by speeding up the pace and covering the Tipp shooters.
“We didn’t help as much from the corners, and they started to miss a little bit more in that second quarter,” Willoughby said.
Tippecanoe’s Jackson Davis grabs a rebound in front of Sidney’s Kaleb Lee. The one Davis grabbed after a teammate missed a free throw in the final minute helped clinch the victory.
But Tipp found other ways, mostly by going through junior guard C.J. Bailey, who scored 15 points. His 17-footer put Tipp up 50-47 with 5:04 left. Tipp, however, had to depend on others to score because of the way Spradling was defending Bailey, who averages a league high 17.9 points.
“I thought Julius played a tremendous defensive game against Bailey, and Bailey struggled to score against him,” Willoughby said. “A lot of people don’t see that from Julius, but we appreciate how good of a defender he is because game in and game out, he’s guarding the best player and shutting most of them down below their averages.”
Bailey understood what the challenge would be for him to go against Spradling and for his team to stay poised in the face of pressure.
“They’re athletic, fast, they like to pressure us, which is what we’ve been struggling with all year,” Bailey said. “They’re more athletic than us, and we try to out-athleticize people because we’re small. And then when you’re going against someone that’s just as athletic as you, maybe even more athletic, it makes it a hard game.”
Sidney senior A’zon Steele scores his 1,000th point.
The score was tied at halftime and Sidney led most of the third quarter before Tipp rallied with a 9-4 run and took a one-point lead into the fourth on Thomas’ 12-foot jumper. Tipp clung to the lead the entire fourth quarter.
Bailey got help from Thomas with 12 points, and each time he scored it seemed timely. And Colin Turner added 10 before fouling out with 2:21 left.
“I love my teammates, and whenever I need them to clutch up, they clutch up,” Bailey said. “Larkin’s only a sophomore. It’s nice to see him step up. Someone steps up every game, and he ended up clutching up for this game and that’s great to see.”
Heading toward tournament time, Moon wants to see his team sharpen a lot of aspects of their game. Tipp is in line to be a No. 2 seed in Division III behind Trotwood-Madison.
“Offensively we got to be a lot cleaner,” he said. “We turn the ball over too much. Our defensive transition has not been great, and that’s partly on me. We play guys a lot of minutes, so we don’t have a deep bench. I need to work on that even these next two weeks, expanding our bench.”
Sidney’s Jayce Daniel bats away a shot attempt by Tipp’s Hudson Ganger.
Sidney is in line to be the No. 1 seed in Division II ahead of Northmont. The Thunderbolts play a tougher schedule in the GWOC and beat Sidney 74-33 on Tuesday. Willoughby said his team moved on quickly from that loss and was mentally prepared for Tipp.
“If the kids are in it mentally, we’re pretty good,” he said. “If they’re taking a day off or whatever, we’re not a very good team. We do a good job preparing, and then when it comes game time, if we’re in it, we’re good. If for some reason we’re not into the game, it shows.”
A week ago the Jackets went to Butler and won 60-42. That performance and Friday night’s performance are what Steele says represents the kind of team he plays for.
“From the beginning of the season to the end, we’ve gotten nothing but better,” he said. “We took a tough loss to Butler in the beginning of the season and at Tipp City. And we came back and competed in both those games.”
Sidney senior Julius Spradling scores his 1,000th point.
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