Bay Hoopsters win stunner in Firelands
By Matt Pawlikowski
Sports
Published Jan. 17, 2007

Almost effortlessly, Bay’s Pat Stilphen shows his style as he goes inside and puts the ball up for two. (Photo by Larry Bennett)

There is no question that Bay is young, and that with youth a learning curve is to be expected.

On Friday night, that youth grew up as they pulled off an upset of Firelands, in Henrietta Twp, which is no easy feat, and serving up the win for the second time this year was Joe Stiphon, who had just six points on the night.

After a timeout that stopped the clock with just under ten seconds remaining, Pat McGlynn (14 points) found Stiphon under the basket, who scored with seven seconds left in the contest to give the Rockets a 46-45 win.

“He hit that shot, and it was the second time this year that he had done that at the end of a game to win it for us,” said Bay coach Jason Frolo. “That was huge. It’s not easy to play here, especially when the game is so tight like this one was.”

For a while it looked as if Firelands would walk away with the win. After scoring just 23 points through the first three periods, Firelands was up by 11 with just under eight minutes remaining in the game.

Then like the El Niño winter that Northeast Ohio has been experiencing, Bay got hot. Particularly the hands of Ben Huntley was on fire. Huntley scored all nine of his points in the periods, nailing down three 3-point shots.

Despite the win over Firelands, Frolo still wasn’t pleased, especially with the lack of offense.

“ We were fortunate to get a win considering the way we played,” said Frolo. “We really only played well for a half of a quarter, and fortunately, it was the last quarter of the game.”

Bay wasn’t as lucky on Saturday against Rocky River, even though they were able to hold the West Shore Conference MVP Joe Caruso to just 11 points. They fell 46-32, after jumping out to a 7-5 first period lead.

“Rocky River played well defensively, but they didn’t really do anything special,’’ said Frolo.  “We just turned the ball over too many times.”

If there was a key to the Pirates upping its record to 7-3, 4-2, it was the fact they outscored the Rockets 14-0 in the second period.

“I wasn’t too happy about that,” said Frolo. “We did a good job on defense the entire game, and playing a box on one on Caruso were able to hold him down from his scoring average of over 20 points. But that period killed us. We need to do more on offense.”

Leading the way for Bay was Tim Majewski, who not only played stellar defense, but also led the team with nine points along with McGlynn. Zack Youseff had seven points for River.

Even though the Rockets are 3-8 overall, and 2-3 in the conference, it is hard to believe they are still in the thick of things, as the WSC has proved to be wild and wacky this season.

Things don’t get any easier for Bay, as they close out the first half of the season Friday against first place Vermilion, who is tied with Midview at 4-1, then open the second half at home Saturday against a stubborn Avon team, who nearly upset the Sailors last weekend.

“Every game from her on in is going to be tough,” said Frolo. “We’re playing better defense now, if we can do that every game, we’ll be happy. The key for us now is to limit turnovers.”