Panthers boys let lead slip away in loss to Oak Harbor

Ben Kubicz

By JEREMY SCHNEIDER

IMA SPORTS

At the beginning of the first and third quarters, Maumee found itself trailing Oak Harbor by eight points each time. Each time, Panthers boys basketball coach T.J. Gillespie called a timeout to regroup his players.

The players responded in the first quarter.

Cold shooting and timely shots from Oak Harbor prevented that from happening in the third as the Rockets took a 49-32 win last week.

“We got down early in the first quarter and had to call a timeout, but we recovered,” Gillespie said. “It was the same thing in the second half, when I called a timeout after we went down by eight (points) again. I explained to them, ‘We’ve been here before, let’s just take it one possession at a time.’

“Oak Harbor hit some big shots at some big times, and we just couldn’t recover.”

The Panthers closed the first quarter on an 11-4 run, and they took a 19-17 lead into halftime. Oak Harbor quickly flipped that, going up by eight at the end of the third.

Gillespie felt his players responded to the first-quarter timeout with positive energy that wasn’t there after halftime.

“You have to go with the positives and explain it to the boys that we’re so close,” Gillespie said. “I feel like we’re so close to being a really good team, we just have to be able to finish games.

“The times that we do play well, it’s high energy. When we’re having fun and we’re not in our heads, we play really, really well.”

Ben Kubicz had 13 points, three steals and two blocks to lead Maumee, and Abram Sutherland had seven rebounds and five points.

The Panthers were ice cold from the floor, shooting 21 percent from the field, including 1-of-17 from 3-point distance.

“We have to put in extra work,” Gillespie said. “We have to get in extra shots during the season and in the offseason.”

Maumee had a much better shooting game a few nights earlier in a narrow 57-56 loss at Eastwood. The Panthers hit 49 percent from the floor and 5-of-8 from 3.

Sutherland had a career-high 19 points, shooting 7-of-11 from the floor and 5-of-5 from the free throw line. He also had six boards.

Kubicz had 13 points, four rebounds and four assists. Brock Heard and Carson Graetz each had eight points.

The losses dropped Maumee to 4-13 on the season and 2-9 in the Northern Buckeye Conference.

Photo courtesy of Pride of the Panthers

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