ALLEGANY, N.Y. — Soon after the Otto-Eldred boys basketball team put the finishing touches on another convincing victory, coach Derrick Francis made it a point to say that this was Shene Thomas’ first start in the Joe DeCerbo Memorial Holiday Showcase in the senior’s four years on varsity.
“Because,” Francis said with a grin, “he finally got out of bed for shoot-around.”
Though the Terrors were a little late waking up themselves against Olean High on Friday night at Allegany-Limestone, Thomas saved them until teammates Manning Splain and Landon Francis started hitting their shots.
When it was all said and done and O-E had secured a thorough 64-43 victory over the Huskies, the team’s slow start was an afterthought.
Thanks to a 30-8 third quarter, the unbeaten Terrors (7-0) won by 20 or more points for the sixth time in seven games. Thomas led the way with 23 points, including burying two of O-E’s six 3-pointers in the decisive quarter.
“I said all summer, I said last year, when Shene’s the best player on the court, we don’t get beat,” Derrick Francis said.
Manning Splain added 18 points and Landon Francis 16 for the Terrors. The only other O-E player to score was Davey Schenfield, who had seven.
“It’s hard to beat us when we’ve got three, four guys scoring double figures in high school basketball,” Francis said.
Caedyn Tingley netted eight of his 10 points in the first half to lead Olean. Luca Quinn came off the bench for nine points.
The Huskies (1-5) led by as many as nine points (20-11) in the first half and never trailed during the game’s first 16 minutes.
“We seemed to do a pretty good job of guarding the paint and forcing some tough looks and then did a really good job on the defensive boards,” OHS coach Tim Kolasinksi said. “Then offensively, we shared the ball, we got it moving, we felt like we spaced things out and were able to take advantage, going to the rim a little bit. It wasn’t a high scoring half, but we were comfortable with the pace that it was at and thought we were in a pretty good position.”
The Terrors didn’t sink their first bucket until Thomas scored inside with two minutes, 11 seconds left in the first quarter. They didn’t connect on their first of eight 3-pointers until Splain drilled one 1:49 before halftime.
Though Thomas had 11 points, Olean led 25-23 at halftime. Francis attributed the sluggish start to not playing a game in 10 days and Olean’s size.
“They’re kids at the end of the day, and when you take them out of their element in school and all that good stuff …. we were competing on the defensive end. We just weren’t making buckets,” Francis said.
Of the Huskies, he added: “They’re super athletic. They’re huge, and they’re a big school. I mean, anytime you can choose from 300 people in a class, that’s a huge plus.”
Splain netted eight points in the final two minutes of the second quarter to finally spark O-E and Francis added eight more in the first two minutes of the second quarter as the Terrors tallied the first 14 points of the second half.
The Terrors came into Friday beating opponents by a 41.2 average. They’re ranked fourth by MaxPreps in Pennsylvania Class AA and are looking for a fourth consecutive trip to the PIAA state tournament.
Olean, meanwhile, is aiming to turnaround a season that has started with close losses to Salamanca and St. Mary’s of Lancaster that could have easily gone the other way.
“I know it’s tough for the guys,” Kolasinski said. “They work hard. They want to get wins. But I think when we go back and we look at this, we’re going to look at that first half and see what we think we can be. Then we’re going to look at that third quarter specifically and just see how we can work on stemming the tide when things start getting away from us a little bit. That’s something that comes from experience.
“We have a little bit of experience back, but we know Otto-Eldred has a lot of experience and you can tell that’s why they didn’t blink coming out of halftime. They probably aren’t used to having a half where they only score 23 points, but they shook that off and it didn’t bother them. That’s their experience.”
O-E faces Cuba-Rushford at 12:45 and Olean faces Warren at 6 p.m. today to close out the DeCerbo Showcase at Allegany-Limestone.
AT ALLEGANY
Olean (43)
Ruggles 0 0-0 0, Hoffman 4 0-0 8, Tingley 4 0-0 10, Mest 3 0-0 8, Rivera 3 1-2 8, Quinn 3 3-3 9. Totals: 17 4-5 43.
Otto-Eldred (64)
Splain 6 2-2 18, D. Schenfield 3 0-2 7, Francis 4 7-10 16, App 0 0-0 0, Thomas 8 5-7 23. Totals: 21 14-21 64.
Olean 9 25 33 43
Otto-Eldred 6 23 53 64
Three-point goals: OHS 5 (Tingley 2, Meat 2, Rivera); O-E 8 (Splain 4, Thomas 2, D. Schenfield, Francis). Total fouls: OHS 22, O-E 12. Fouled out: Hoffman.
