It was all about the defense, as Bradley kept the high-powered Orange offense at bay with rejections like this one by Jordan Reed-Davis on the shot attempt by Treyton Schroeder. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Logan Gapen)
Five years without a championship seems like an eternity for tradition-rich Hilliard Bradley, but the Jaguars turned in a superlative defensive performance to slay the two-time defending Central champs and 2025 state champs.
Hilliard, OH – That big old number 66 stuck out like a sore thumb on the otherwise glittering resume of the Hilliard Bradley boys basketball team this season. That’s the number Olentangy Orange hung on the Jaguars in an eye-popping 19-point rout on Jan. 9.
With the Ohio Capital Conference Central Division championship on the line Friday in a rematch against the defending Division I state champion, Bradley was determined to prove that the first meeting either was an anomaly, simply a case of the Jaguars running into a buzzsaw or a little of both.
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“They’re a fast-starting team that can jump on you quick and ride that momentum,” Bradley junior guard Ben Mirgon said. “That was a hard lesson we learned the first time, and we weren’t going to let it happen again.”
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Bradley returned to its familiar form with a workmanlike 47-37 win over Orange that secured its first conference title since 2020-21 and sixth since the program’s inception in 2009-10.
The Jaguars (18-2, 8-1), who rarely allow more than 50 points in a game, lowered their season average to 44.8 by putting the clamps on the up-tempo Pioneers (12-8, 6-3).
“Defensively, we were pretty good tonight,” Bradley 12th-year coach Brett Norris said. “They key was to keep them out of transition and not allow them to get in a rhythm. One way to do that is to control the boards and without looking at the stats, I’m guessing were on the plus side of that. In the first matchup, we were playing catch-up all night and we wanted to stay the course and play our style of ball.”
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Brian Ceol leaves no doubt about this bucket as he slams it home with authority in the fourth quarter.
After opening the season 0-3 and 1-4 due in part to a late start created by the football team capturing the state title in early December, Orange came in playing some fine ball with quality wins over Bradley, Centennial, Gahanna, Olentangy Berlin, Dublin Coffman, Upper Arlington and Olentangy. Its only defeats in 2026 came to juggernauts Cincinnati Princeton, Newark and Westerville North. Only one full-time starter returned from last March’s championship run.
For such a low-scoring game, the night featured some unusually large swings.
Mirgon scored eight points in an 11-0 run to give Bradley a 15-5 lead midway through the second quarter.
In the third quarter, Bradley’s Jayden Reed-Davis was assessed a technical foul for taunting and Orange turned it into a six-point sequence to get back in the game.
An ice-cold 3-point shot by Treyton Schroeder capped a 9-2 Orange run and forced a 25-25 tie with 3:12 left, prompting a Bradley timeout.
“I was really calm,” Norris said. “We were just turning it over too much and giving them easy chances. I just wanted to reiterate a few things and get us back on track.”
Mission accomplished. The Jaguars closed the quarter on a 10-0 run, with four different players accounting for the scoring.
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Orange was able to cut an 11-point deficit to 43-37 on a 25-foot 3-pointer by Schroeder with 1:32 left, but Bradley went to a delay and iced away the win at the free throw line.
Kypton Norris drives against Treyton Schroeder adding a 12-point performance to the effort.
Schroeder, a two-time first-team All-Ohio defensive back, led the Pioneers with 14 points. Brian Ceol had all nine of his off the bench in the fourth quarter.
Mirgon scored a game-high 19 points and added five rebounds to pace Bradley. His most spectacular play was an inbounds pass off defender Xavier Aguila’s derriere to himself for an easy layup.
Sophomore Kypton Norris, the coach’s youngest of four sons, had 12 points, five rebounds and three assists. Also a sophomore, Reed-Davis contributed eight points and five rebounds, and also excelled on defense.
“I think the difference tonight was just energy,” Reed-Davis said. “We just had to play harder and stay on top of things from start to finish. The big key on defense tonight was we weren’t going to let them get out and run and shoot threes. We wanted to stay down and make them go through us.”
Ben Mirgon knifes through the Orange defense and adds to the Jaguars cause.
Mirgon said winning the title on its home court, where the Jaguars are undefeated, was special. Doing it on the heels of an atypical 8-15 campaign made it even sweeter.
“We didn’t play anywhere near our best the first time against them … we just weren’t ourselves, so this feels really good,” he said. “It wasn’t pretty. But coach just kept telling us to stay the course and we’d be fine. I feel like when we play halfcourt defense the way we can, we’re hard to beat.”
Bradley’s players cut down the nets to celebrate the Central title, but Norris hopes there are similar scenes to follow. The Jaguars entered the game as the second-ranked team in the Central District behind Newark (a team they beat 43-41 on Jan. 31) and fourth in Ohio. The MaxPreps RPI power ratings are used to determine the seeds, which will be determined on Feb. 22. Orange was rated fourth and 11th, respectively.
“It’s been a little while since we’ve been league champions, so I told the guys to savor it and take tomorrow off,” Brett Norris said. “In this league, you’ve got to earn it every night out, so it is meaningful. But as I told the guys in the locker room before we came back out, this isn’t an arrival. It’s a launching pad. We’ve got to get a lot better if we’re going to achieve the goals we’re shooting for.”
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