Eagles sink Yellow Springs in overtime

MCS rally overshadows 46-point effort by Bulldogs’ Newsome.

Frazier’s home run lifts Reds to 5th straight win
10:20 a.m.
Spartans head to regional final
5/24/12
Fenwick’s tourney run ends in regional semis
5/24/12
2 Middie jumpers qualify for state
5/24/12
College baseball: Miami tops Toledo in MAC tourney
5/23/12
> More sports headlines

By John Bombatch, Staff Writer 2:42 AM Saturday, January 14, 2012

MIDDLETOWN — It just might be the biggest comeback in Middletown Christian School basketball history.

The host Eagles rallied from 25 points down Friday night for a dramatic 93-89 overtime victory over Yellow Springs.

And how they did it is the stuff folks pay Hollywood scriptwriters to dream up.

Trailing 78-74 with 8.8 seconds left, Middletown Christian’s Zach Wise tossed up a prayer from the top of the 3-point arc. Not only did the shot go in, making it 78-77 with just over two clicks left on the game clock, but the Bulldogs defender on the play was whistled for a foul.

“Of course that was a foul,” Wise said with a smile. “The Metro Buckeye Conference has tremendous officials, and they made the right call.”

Wise then hit the game-tying free throw to send things to overtime.

Again, Wise stole a movie script. This time, it sealed the win for MCS (6-4, 2-2 MBC).

Wise drove in from the right, scored and was fouled to put the Eagles in front 91-89 with 3.7 seconds left. He missed his free-throw try badly, but stepped between four Bulldogs, got the rebound, and was fouled again.

With the MCS fans on their feet and the Yellow Springs fans doing everything they could possibly do to distract him, the Eagles senior encouraged his fans to cheer, then calmly hit both free throws to seal an improbable comeback.

“I’m possibly one of the worst free-throw shooters on the team,” said Wise, who finished with a team-high 33 points. “So missing it that badly didn’t surprise me. But I am surprised that a good rebounding team like Yellow Springs (2-7, 1-3) made one mental error that made the difference like that. That was all it took.”

Having trailed 43-22 at halftime and 47-22 at the start of the third quarter, MCS outscored Yellow Springs 71-46 in the second half and the four-minute overtime period to win.

The comeback overshadowed a career scoring night from Yellow Springs’ Roland Newsome, who scored the Bulldogs’ first 14 points of the game on his way to a career- and game-high 46 points.

“Oh yeah. That’s easily a career high for Roland,” Yellow Springs coach Brad Newsome said of his son. “I’m really proud of his effort tonight, because we needed every bit of it.”

Yellow Springs’ leading scorer, Greg Felder, went out in the first quarter after an elbow to the chest. Two other Bulldogs players did not play because of injuries suffered in practice this week.

“We had 10 days off between games, and we had some guys who were playing new positions, so I knew it would take us a little bit to get untracked,” MCS coach Luke Gibson said. “The defense started getting untracked, we started hitting some threes ... and from there we went.”

Drew King and Josh Hall added 15 points apiece, Josh Hutson had 14 and Zach Henderson had 13 for the Eagles.

Middletown Christian hosts Cincinnati Christian on Tuesday.

Share this article