BASKETBALL: St. Paul bounces back after trailing at halftime

GIBSONBURG — One can understand why the subject is delicate for St. Paul coach Mike Smith.

With his Flyers long forgotten at 6-9 overall after 15 games, Tuesday night’s 44-35 Division IV district semifinal victory against Toledo Christian at Gibsonburg High School marked another big win in the team’s late turnaround.

Because every varsity basketball player was in uniform for the football team’s state championship in December, the basketball team started 19 days after the rest of the area got under way.

As fans were accustomed to the same players dominating in football, Smith, a veteran of 21 years, often felt the heat.

“Heck, one guy playfully wanted to run me over in the parking lot at school and said he’d probably have a lot of people give him $10 to do it,” Smith said. “But that’s OK. That same guy shook my hand the other day.”

The eighth consecutive victory puts St. Paul in the district championship for the second straight year. It faces Ottawa Hills (21-1) at 7 p.m. Friday St. Paul improved to 40-20 in the tournament under Smith.

“This is the team I expected to have,” Smith said. “When you start six weeks behind in basketball, people can say whatever they want, but when we started our seven-day preseason after everyone else had 40 days, we struggled offensively and started second-guessing ourselves, and the critics did as well.

“I knew what type of a team we had and kept telling the kids to hang in there. A lot of people wanted to blow this team up, and I refused to do so. Early on we played a lot of kids because we didn’t have a preseason. We found our niche and have great senior leadership. Those kids didn’t let the outside influences bother them, and here we are playing our best basketball and in a district championship.”

Trailing 19-17 at halftime, the Flyers got an early spark in the third quarter as senior guard Dan Tracht pulled the trigger on back-to-back 3-pointers in a 43-second span to give St. Paul a 23-19 lead. It continued as the Eagles got no closer than three points the rest of the way.

“I was trying to make something happen after a quiet first half,” Tracht said of the two 3-pointers. “That got us the lead, and seemed to get us rolling. We’ve gotten into basketball form and everything is going right for us at the right time.”

St. Paul pushed the lead to 33-24 at the end of the third quarter as Eric Schwieterman, Daren Smith and Brian Griffin all scored baskets in the final two-plus minutes of the quarter. The Eagles pulled to within 35-31 with 3:24 left, but the Flyers put the game away at the free-throw line as seven of their final 11 points came at the line.

“I think the difference was our complementary players stepped up,” Smith said. “We got in a little bit of a hurry there in the third quarter, but we slowed things down and got organized and were able to spread the floor. I liked our discipline in the last two minutes, and I especially liked the way we finished.”

Schwieterman led St. Paul with nine points and eight rebounds while Daren Smith added nine points and Tracht had seven points and five rebounds.

Tracht talked about the benefits and struggles of the delay to start the season.

“It helped and hurt a little bit with the fewer practices,” he said. “But as everyone was peaking at midseason, we are peaking at what is most teams’ end of the season. It was sort of our midseason form over the last month. We’ve been through a lot together, and we know each other so well it carries over from sport to sport.”