GARRETTSVILLE — “What does this championship mean?”
It’s a staple of postgame interviews.
A silly staple, some might argue.
It was certainly an unnecessary question following Southeast boys basketball’s 79-61 victory at Garfield Feb. 20 to cement the program’s first league title since 2012. What did winning a share of the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference Grey Tier championship mean to the Pirates? Just look at the crowd, with the visitors side packed well before the opening tip.
“It means a lot,” said junior Cohen Richardson, who tallied a game-high 24 points. “I’ve grown up at Southeast. My uncle played basketball, I think he was a freshman when they won the championship, and I’ve been dreaming about playing on the Southeast court and I get to do it and it’s nice to give the town something that they don’t see very often in basketball.”
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So what did that title mean to the Pirates?
Just watch Joe Sharish skid to the floor to knock a G-Men pass away — with the senior pinging the ball off an opposing player and out of bounds for the steal. Watch sophomore Devyn Miller fly out of bounds as he heaves the ball back into play to secure yet another extra possession.
“That’s just Southeast basketball,” Richardson said. “Coach Dillon, that’s what he preaches. He wants us to play hard, give it all we got, because we’re not the biggest and not the strongest, but we can hustle and we can dive on the floor.”
Two weeks ago, Southeast missed out on its first shot at clinching a title when its game at Garfield was postponed due to a water main break. A week later, the Pirates missed out on their second shot, dropping a four-point game at Brookfield. The rescheduled G-Men game marked their final shot and the Pirates (18-4, 11-3) played like a team desperate for a title. Tack on 13 3-pointers — and three players with at least 17 points — and they got one.
“One thing that this team has done even though we’re young, they’ve been mentally tough,” Southeast coach Matt Dillon said. “We lost a game earlier in the year to Tuslaw. We bounced back. We lost to LaBrae. We bounced back. We did the same thing when we lost to Brookfield, and that’s a sign not just of basketball toughness, but life toughness, because there’s going to be times in life where you’re going to have to bounce back when you get older. This was a good way to kind of learn that.”
Joe Sharish fuels early run for Southeast
Joe Sharish hadn’t played basketball in a couple of years when he returned to the floor as a sophomore. Now it’s hard to imagine Southeast without him.
The height-starved Pirates certainly need Sharish with only three regulars reaching the six-foot threshold — and Dillon conceding that one of those three might be a stretch.
Leading just 12-10 after G-Men junior Collin McGranahan knocked down a 3-pointer with a minute left in the opening quarter, Sharish took over. Maybe 12 seconds after McGranahan’s 3-pointer, Sharish powered through his defender in the right post for a layup en route to an old-fashioned 3-point play. The senior post followed with the other kind of 3-point play as he showed his range from the wing and put the Pirates up 18-10. Richardson added a steal and heave to Caden Dillon for a layup in the closing seconds to take a 10-point lead into the break.
“When the team is going on a run like that, you get so much confidence,” Sharish said. “When you’re feeling that, the whole team is just coming together. Go back to the Mogadore game, I think we hit 13 threes in a row or something like that, and you just feel that and you feel that energy and it just makes it so much easier.”
That advantage held — Garfield’s last lead was 7-6 just past the midpoint of the first quarter — though certainly not without a fight. The G-Men, like their guests, knocked down a barrage of 3-pointers, including four apiece by senior Cam Chapman and McGranahan. And junior Devin Bates was a bulldog, scoring 11 of his 15 points in the second half.
Southeast always had an answer.
When the G-Men got within eight early in the third quarter, Richardson found Sharish for a bank shot to ignite a 20-3 run. That run included a Richardson baseline inbound to Sharish, with Sharish faking the pass back to Richardson — after making that very same pass to the corner earlier for a Richardson 3-pointer — before rolling to the basket for a layup. Bradley Dillon, Braedyn Walden and Richardson all added 3-pointers as part of the run.
When Garfield pulled within 14 in the opening minute of the fourth, Miller found Richardson racing to the top of the arc and the junior sharpshooter promptly knocked down his fifth and final 3-pointer of the night.
There might not be a more effective play in basketball. The shooter races to a spot, sometimes helped by a screen. The passer delivers the ball on time. The shooter catches and shoots without delay.
How do you stop it?
Richardson hit a couple of 3-pointers that way en route to a game-high 24 points. So did Bradley Dillon as he erupted for four 3-pointers after halftime to finish with 17 points just like Sharish.
“Cohen has done a great job of learning how to move without the ball, but primarily because Coach [Zeddie] Pollock has taught him that,” Matt Dillon said. “And then the younger guards have watched Cohen and now they’re starting to do it.”
So what did this title mean?
It’s simple.
“I think you saw the community tonight, they were really excited,” Dillon said. “They like to see hard work. The kids play hard.”
Contact Jonah L. Rosenblum at jrosenblum@recordpub.com and follow him on Twitter at @JLRSports.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Southeast hoops shows toughness, wins first league title since 2012
Reporting by Jonah Rosenblum, Ravenna Record-Courier / Record-Courier
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