WILLARD — They no longer battle for Northern Ohio League supremacy, but the rivalry between Shelby and Willard is as feisty as ever.
In a game that harkened back to the glory days of the NOL, the Crimson Flashes overcame a 21-point third-quarter deficit for a scintillating 78-73 win Tuesday at Robert L. Haas Gymnasium.
The Crimson Flashes (13-2) surrendered 51 points in the first half only to hold the Whippets (13-2) to 22 points in the final two quarters. Willard outscored Shelby 26-13 in the fourth quarter and took its first lead of the night on a pair of Cooper Parrott free throws with 2:55 remaining.
“Our kids don’t quit. They fight,” Willard coach Joe Bedingfield said. “They’re experienced basketball players. They just responded at halftime and that’s what good teams do.
“They don’t give in and they don’t back down.”
Shelby, which had its seven-game winning streak snapped, played arguably its best quarter of the season during the first period. Leading 8-5, the Whippets scored 15 unanswered points to open a 23-5 advantage. Willard stemmed the tied briefly with a 6-0 run of its own, but the Whippets closed the quarter on an 8-4 run for a 31-15 lead.
“That’s what I’ve been telling everybody all year long that we’re capable of,” first-year Shelby coach Nathon Loney said. “We finally put it together.”
Shelby pushed its advantage to 51-33 at the half, outscoring Willard 20-18 in the period. T.J. Pugh had 19 points in the opening half.
“Shelby is a good up-and-down team and they got after us right away,” Bedingfield said. “Our kids tried to run with them a little bit and got out of character. We didn’t do the things that, we thought if we did, we would be successful.”
Shelby took a 54-33 lead on Jonny Devito’s long two-point field goal with 7:36 in the third quarter before Willard came to life. The Crimson Flashes, who overcame a 19-point deficit to the Whippets last year, responded with a 13-2 run to cut the Shelby lead to 56-46 on a pair of Parrott free throws with 2:53 remaining in the third. An acrobatic runner by Terry Baldridge, Willard’s 6-foot-8 senior swingman, at the third-quarter horn cut the Shelby lead to 60-52.
Baldridge’s 3-pointer with 7:07 remaining in the fourth trimmed the Shelby advantage to 62-55. A Parrott trey with 4:53 remaining made it 66-63 before Pugh pushed the Shelby lead to 68-63 with a layup with 4:35 remaining.
Willard outscored Shelby 15-5 the rest of the way with 11 points coming from the free throw line. The Crimson Flashes outscored the Whippets 26-8 at the free throw stripe.
Baldridge led the Flashes with 24 points, while Parrott added 22. Trey Paxton and Mhles Pinkston each had 10.
“We played our basketball in the second half,” Parrott said. “We let Shelby play their basketball in the first half.
“Everyone stepped up tonight and it showed.”
Pugh led the Whippets with a game-high 30 points. Grant Gossom and Cody Lantz each had 12.
“I think we got content in the second half,” Loney said. “We came out at the start of the third quarter and took some bad shots. You’re up 20 and you think one bad 3 isn’t going to hurt. One bad 3 turns into two bad 3s and all of a sudden you go from being up 20 to up 12.
“We’ve had two comeback wins like that, one against Ontario and one against Norwalk. Now we’re on the other end of it and it doesn’t feel so good.”
