Victoria Mescher led the Redskins’ offensive assault with 21 points.
Fort Loramie bounded to a 23-2 lead against Mississinawa Valley, and sloppy second and third quarters weren’t enough to threaten the commanding lead. The Lady Redskins are regional champions by a score of 61-29, and have their eyes set on the shiniest prize.
Vandalia, OH – “If we could’ve just played the first and fourth quarter twice, we would’ve been OK,” Fort Loramie coach Carla Siegel said with a smile.
Alan Brads writes OHSSA sports and sports at large for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Those introductory postgame words should tell you something about Fort Loramie girls basketball. Even half joking, that’s not a typical response of a coach that just won a Division VII regional championship by 32 points.
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But Loramie’s not a typical team, and Siegel’s team didn’t embark upon the postseason voyage to win a regional championship. A fiery start and emphatic finish gave the Lady Redskins a 61-29 regional championship win over Mississinawa Valley and brought them one step closer to the goal of a second straight state championship, now just 64 minutes away.
One trophy won’t satisfy, and for tonight’s starting five, state is their last chance for another.
Loramie’s five seniors want one more trophy. They opened the game as the starting unit, with Autumn Turner standing in for the injured sophomore point guard Maddie Shatto.
Fort Loramie’s Izzy Meyer and her teammates took the ball hard at Mississinawa Valley for a 32-point win.
“These five seniors are on a mission,” Siegel said. “I always tell them before the game, ‘It’s your senior year, how do you want it to go? Take control, set the tone.’ I felt like they did just that. Their defense was really good. I felt like they stymied Mississinawa Valley for a while and got some easy looks at the basket.”
Senior forward Victoria Mescher said because the senior leaders of this team got to experience the ultimate victory last year, they want to share that experience with their younger teammates.
The score was tied for 4.5 seconds. Then Avery Brandewie’s layup took the lead, and they never came close to giving it up.
The first quarter was an all-out frontal assault. Loramie went on the offensive, even on defense, forcing turnovers and scoring easy buckets in droves on the other end. By the time the Blackhawks even knew what hit them they trailed 6-0 after 90 seconds.
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“We just came out so energized,” said Mescher, who led the first quarter in scoring with eight, and the game with 21. “We knew we had to come out with that energy because we knew they would. We just exploded through those first nine minutes.”
But the Blackhawks didn’t come out with the energy Loramie expected. Turnovers caused indecisiveness, which snowballed into unforced turnovers.
Avery Brandewie scored 15 points to help lead the Redskins back to state.
Fearful of turning the ball over, Mississinawa settled for the first shot available, even if it was from five feet beyond the arc. Nothing fell, and Loramie rebounded well, and ran fast breaks off turnovers and defensive rebounds alike.
Ariel Heitkamp capped the onslaught with a flourish, beating the buzzer with a 3-pointer to extend the lead to 21-2. Heitkamp scored seven in the first quarter.
But then Loramie lost its edge. Perhaps content with the early lead, the pressure relented. Without gorging on turnovers the offense slowed down, but Loramie still held Mississinawa to seven points in the quarter, and matched with seven of its own.
“We started to play to not lose instead of to win,” Mescher said. “We gotta keep our mentality to win, and learn to stay calm when we’re getting rattled. If they’re trying to speed us up, we gotta slow down and trust each other.”
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With three minutes left in the half, Brandewie scrambled for a loose ball, and collapsed with an apparent left ankle injury. Down a starter already, losing the SCAL player of the year at this juncture would’ve altered the shape of the rest of the tournament. But Brandewie reentered early in the third quarter, and scored eight of her 15 points in the second half.
“We had a lot of ups and downs in this game, but to be a part of this with my teammates was a blast,” Brandewie said, seemingly in high health and spirits.
Kendall Tennery leads the cheers from the bench as Fort Loramie races to another regional title.
Mississinawa Valley finally played like a regional runner-up in the third quarter, bursting through Loramie’s pressure, and finally sinking a few deep balls.
The Blackhawks scored 19 third-quarter points, chopping the lead as low as 12, but the mountain was too steep to scale.
The Redskins retreated to the huddle before the fourth quarter, reorganized, then resumed the assault that began in the first. They discomforted Mississinawa’s guards to the point of launching deep threes, though perhaps the score justified it.
They regained their offensive mojo, out-maneuvering Mississinawa’s zone, and finding Mescher and Brandewie for easy layups to bolster the lead. Again they held the Blackhawks to just two points for a quarter, running away with a 32-point win, adding another trophy to the ever-expanding case.
The Redskins’ next opponent will be announced Sunday, but is presumed to be Ottoville. Mogadore and Waterford are projected to meet in the other semifinal.
State semifinals and Fort Loramie form a familiar pair. But the OHSAA overhaul of the state tournament puts everyone back on a level playing field. No one is used to what will unfold over the next two weeks, not even Carla Siegel.
The Redskins’ defense surrounded the Blackhawks from the first quarter to the fourth quarter.
Loramie will play its semifinal on either Thursday or Friday, and with a win, would have to wait over a week until March 15 to play a state championship game.
“I’ll be the first one to be vocal, and I’m sure every coach is vocalizing that we’re not used to this,” Siegel said. “We’re used to two games a week. And for the state to do this to us, it’s unfortunate, just dragging it out.”
Was it a necessity for all 14 state championships to take place on the same weekend? I don’t pretend to understand every logistic that goes into that decision, but you can’t help but wonder if they spent too much time asking if they could, and not enough asking if they should.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do this week,” Siegel said. “Do we play on Thursday? Do we play on Friday? We don’t even know when we play yet. When we find out tomorrow, that’s when we’ll decide what to we’re doing for the week. … There are great teams in the state of Ohio, and we’re all in the same boat. So maybe I should just call my friend Jerry [Close – Waterford Head Coach] and call my friend Vaughn [Horstman – Ottoville Head Coach] and see what they’re gonna do.”
If it really is a matter of preference, it’s hard to imagine that Division III schools want to play a state title game at 1 p.m. on a Friday in order to play the same weekend as the boys. Or that any of these teams want an eight-day break between semifinals and finals.
“I just wish it was quicker,” Brandewie said. She probably would play it tonight as a doubleheader if they’d let her. “But it does give us more time to get ready for our opponent and get our last-minute details situated before the biggest games of our season.”
Not “game,” but “games.” That’s the expectation for Fort Loramie girls basketball. Whoever plays them, whenever they play them, better come ready to string four quarters together. The Lady Redskins won’t let you get away with anything less.
Mississinawa Valley offered little resistance to Avery Brandewie and her Fort Loramie teammates.
