BARBERTON – The Hillsdale boys basketball team is probably still floating on air after its heart-stopping, 58-57 regional championship victory Friday night over Heartland Christian.
Now, the Falcons know who they will meet on cloud nine in their Division VII state Final Four game at 2 p.m. next Friday at Wright State University’s Nutter Center.
The Kalida Wildcats – ranked No. 7 in the division by MaxPreps – are the next challenge for 15th-ranked Hillsdale after they toppled No. 3 Montpelier on Saturday at Bowling Green State University, 66-53.
Playing a very strong regular-season schedule, the Wildcats (16-11) started the year just 7-11, but have ripped off nine straight wins. Before Saturday, Kalida hadn’t allowed more than 47 points in any game during its win streak.
The Wildcats were second in their Putnam County League to Columbus Grove. When the All-PCL team was announced earlier this month, Kalida sophomore Owen Grime was the team’s lone player on the first- or second-team.
The guard not only hit the game-winning 3-pointer in the Wildcats’ 39-37 district final win against Minster, but his jumper in double-overtime against Pettisville in the regional semifinals also was the game-winner.
Ironically, Hillsdale coach Ben Ferguson and his sophomore point guard son, Lowen Ferguson, have seen Grime before. Last spring, Grime’s AAU team played against Ferguson’s for a championship at a tournament in Fort Wayne, Ind.
“He and Lowen both had better than 30 points, but they got the better of us and we lost by two points,” coach Ferguson said Saturday on a call while driving back from watching the Kalida game. “I never thought I’d see him again in my life and after that game I congratulated him and told him what a good player I thought he was.
“Little did I know that, 11 months later, we’d be running into him in the state semifinals.”
Hillsdale has its own scintillating sophomore in Ferguson – himself a first-team selection in the Wayne County Athletic League alongside junior wing Kael Lewis.
Ferguson already has the Falcons record for career 3-pointers (111) and single-season treys (61).
Hillsdale is riding a nearly identical winning streak to Kalida, with 10 in a row to get to this point.
The Wildcats are two seasons removed from going 4-19. Before their run this winter, they hadn’t won a tournament game since 2023.
Coach Ferguson said Kalida has solid size in its wing players and also plays aggressive defense.
Haunted by close games, Falcons get one when it matters
A few days ago, Hillsdale might have looked back on this season as one brutalized by a few close losses.
The Falcons missed out on a chance at their first WCAL crown in 15 years because three of their four league losses came by scores of 55-51, 54-52 and 68-66 in overtime.
That might have haunted the team when it looked back on this season.
But on Friday, Hillsdale’s 58-57 win in the final seconds over Heartland Christian gave the Falcons a taste of the flip-side.
“As a coach you often think that you have to learn from the losses,” Ferguson said. “When it comes down to a two-point game, it really is anybody’s game. But (Friday’s) game was so close for the last couple minutes and I do think that playing in all these close games throughout the year helped us.”
Bennett’s fitting big shot
When Hillsdale guard Troy Bennett hit Friday’s game-winning shot with 7.5 seconds left, it felt like a culminating moment for the senior.
With the lowest scoring average of any of the Falcon starters (7.5 ppg), it was a bit of an unlikely bucket – made even more unlikely by the fact that he suffered a serious injury earlier this year as well.
During the team’s three-game trip to a Florida tournament in December, the senior endured a bad ankle sprain. He was forced to wear a boot for a time and missed about a month.
“Right when it happened I honestly didn’t think I was gonna come back at all,” Bennett said Friday. “I kept going to the doctor’s, working on it, icing it, doing everything I could so I could come back.”
His layup against the Lions goes down as one of the biggest in the history of Hillsdale basketball.
Lewis twins get another stamp in their state passport
Speaking of missed time, junior Knox Lewis dealt with some sickness earlier in the season, causing him to miss a four-point loss to Waynedale.
He was a bit in question entering Friday’s game after being sick for four days leading up to it as well.
“I feel amazing right now,” he said after going for eight points and 12 rebounds Friday. “Once the adrenaline wears down I might feel a little different.
“I loaded up on some medicine and I knew I was gonna play in this game. I’m ready for the next one.”
Alongside his twin brother, Kael, the Lewis boys now have quite a piece of history to hang in their personal sports storybooks.
The two were part of Hillsdale’s Final Four baseball team as freshmen, then made it to back-to-back state championship games in football before clinching the basketball Final Four berth Friday night.
“We’re just a bunch of champions,” Knox said. “Hard work pays off and we have a great community behind us. Once we made that run in baseball, then in football, we figured we might as well go in another sport.”
“It’s special,” Kael added. “We’re a team full of winners and that’s what we’ve done the last few years. Those pressure moments, we thrive in those moments.”
Hillsdale locks in its place in area history
Making a trip to the state tournament puts the Falcons in some more extremely rare air when it comes to Ashland-area boys basketball history.
There have been just three other local boys squads to make the Final Four – Ashland in 1932 and Loudonville in back-to-back years in 2004 and 2005.
Both the Arrows and Redbirds also made the state quarterfinals in 1941, and Ashland was in the quarterfinals as well in 1936 and 1937.
That’s the extent of it.
No Ashland-area boys team has ever played in a state championship basketball game.
