FREMONT – The Little Giant basketball team had its best four-quarter effort yet this season, competing hard from the opening tip to the final whistle.
But it wasn’t quite enough to propel Ross to its first win of the season.
The Little Giants entered the fourth quarter trailing by six points but couldn’t cut the deficit in a 56-50 loss to Toledo Central Catholic.
“I felt like this was a game and, even when we got behind, we made it so I was still taking timeouts and trying to set a defense,” Ross coach John Cahill said. “I felt like we stayed in the battle and everybody that played gave great effort tonight. I felt like they overcame some adversity and they battled. I hate to lose, but they battled, and the effort was much, much better.”
Bryce Root started the game on fire for the Little Giants. He scored Ross’ first 11 points, including three 3-pointers in the first five minutes, as Ross played Central nearly even through the first quarter, trailing 17-14.
With 3:10 to go in the first half, Jabryis Heidelburg drove to the bucket for a layin, tying the game at 23. The Fighting Irish, however, ended the half on an 8-0 run to enter halftime holding a 31-23 lead.
“To our credit, a lot of times when (we give up a scoring run) we start to play hero ball and start to jack up a lot of shots and we didn’t do that tonight, maybe a little bit near the end of the second quarter, but not as much,” Cahill said. “(Heidelburg) is doing a nice job of settling us down. He took one ill-advised shot…other than that, I felt like he was clean, getting the ball and attacking the basket. I felt like he did a nice job of calming us down.”
Heidelburg finished with a game-high 22 points while Root ended the game with 16. Freshman LaBronze Barnett started his first game on varsity and acquitted himself well, looking in place and fulfilling Cahill’s promise to tweak the lineup following Ross’ Tuesday night loss to St. John’s.
“Probably for the first time in the history of the school a kid starts on the freshman team and starts on varsity by the weekend,” Cahill said. “We told them going in, the freshman and JV team, there is no real difference and if one of them moves up, they’re not going to the JV team, because we like both groups and we don’t want to mix and match. …Bronzie went in, he played hard, he defended, he handled it and we got grittier play, which we should do at Fremont.”
Trailing by deficits of six and seven points in the fourth quarter, the Little Giants settled primarily for 3-point shots rather than trying to attack the basket to trim the deficit with higher-percentage shots.
“Our challenge, offensively, is we’re not incredibly dynamic right now, hopefully we’ll get better,” Cahill said. “For us, we are somewhat reliant on shooting. We have a lot of guys, that’s what they do, they spot up and shoot. We had good looks, Ben (Gedeon) had a good look and we had looks to make it interesting and they didn’t go down.
“If we get Bryce McKinstry back, he’ll give us that athlete in the middle that we don’t have. If we get him back, and we hope he’ll be able to come back, he’ll change a little bit of what we do.”
Ross (0-4 overall, 0-3 TRAC) travels to Findlay next Friday.
Toledo Central Catholic 56, Fremont Ross 50
CC| 17—14—8—17 56
FR| 14—9—10—17 50
CENTRAL CATHOLIC (56)
Cameron Awls 2, Kendal Marshall 10, Semaj Cross 6, Ray Sanders 4, Michael Griffin 3, Dominique Cole 10, Jonzelle Norrils 5, Fred Overton 15.
FREMONT ROSS (50)
LaBronze Barnnett 1, Jabryis Heidelburg 22, Ben Gedeon 2, Bryce Root 16, Hayden Lehmann 6, Ethan Chumley 3.