'Just find a way': GlenOak boys top McKinley, will face Louisville in OHSAA district final

ALLIANCE — Rick Hairston likes to needle his GlenOak High School boys basketball players, telling them at the practice before tournament games, "Welp, guess this is the last practice, huh?"

After Thursday night's district semifinal pressure cooker against rival Canton McKinley, the veteran head coach looked at senior Jaylen McElroy and asked with a smile, "So, one more practice?"

"Five more games," McElroy answered without hesitation, referring to a state championship run.

The Golden Eagles are feeling good, and they've earned the right to be.

After losing two close games in the regular season to the Bulldogs, GlenOak pulled out a hotly contested 69-64 win before a capacity crowd at Alliance High School's Harry Fails Gymnasium.

The No. 9 seed Golden Eagles (19-6) advanced to the Division I, Northeast 2 district championship — their first district final appearance since 2011 — where they will face No. 4 Louisville (23-2) and head coach Tom Siegfried on at 2 p.m. Saturday back in Alliance.

Hairston's first coaching job was in 1988 as the eighth grade boys basketball coach at Alliance's old Stanton Junior High, where his point guard was a kid by the name of Tom Siegfried.

"Tom and I have a beautiful relationship," Hairston said, before adding with a laugh, "I hope we don't ruin it on Saturday."

On Thursday, Hairston's point guard was McElroy, filling in for junior Bryce Broom, who is battling mononucleosis.

Mind you, the lanky, 6-foot-2 McElroy isn't a point guard. But he's an unselfish basketball player, and he's a competitor.

McElroy went for 18 points, four assists and two blocked shots in a substance-over-style performance at the lead guard.

"Every day at practice, if Bryce goes out or something, I do make sure to go to point guard," said McElroy, typically a wing player. "So if we do get in situations like this, I'm the next man to step up."

GlenOak enjoyed a variety of contributions in a game where the intensity never waned.

Junior post Reese Zerger totaled team highs of 20 points and eight rebounds. He hit a huge 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter to cut GlenOak's deficit to a point. His put-back bucket off a wild scramble that had bodies flying all over the place put GlenOak in the lead for good with 2:14 left.

Senior Ja'Corey Lipkins scored 15 points and grabbed six rebounds. He twice tied the score with buckets (a 3 and a back-door layup) in the fourth quarter. Lipkins and Zerger both hit two free throws in the final minute to put McKinley away.

"I thought our kids were very resilient," Hairston said. "They made plays when we needed to make plays. I'm just really, really proud of them right now because you lose to a team twice and you get that doubt creeping into your mind, like, 'Hey, maybe they're just better than we are.' But in our preparation, we talked about how we had made so many mistakes in those other two games that they could have easily gone the other way."

Thursday's game played out in reverse fashion from the first two, during which GlenOak outplayed McKinley for most or all of three quarters before losing.

This time, it was No. 17 seed McKinley leading for much of the second and third quarters, only to see GlenOak crawl back.

The Bulldogs led by as many as six points on a couple of occasions. They were up 49-44 late in the third quarter after McElroy picked up his fourth foul and had to sit down (only after an intense exchange with Hairston and a few minutes cooling off in the locker room).

It felt like a crossroads moment.

Sophomore Issa White stepped up, knocking down two 3-pointers late in the third to keep GlenOak on McKinley's heels.

McKinley led 54-50 with 7:11 left in the fourth on Reed Sims Jr.'s fourth and final 3-pointer.

It also was the last field goal, period, for the Bulldogs.

McKinley missed its last eight shots from the floor, couldn't come up with some key rebounds/loose balls and just wasn't as sharp as it needed to be down the stretch. On the boards, the Bulldogs could have used sophomore starter Anthony Chavers, who sat out because of a concussion.

"We just couldn't extend that lead to a comfortable lead, and they kept fighting, which is what we expected," McKinley head coach Sean Weatherspoon said. "Those guys didn't want to go home and they played as hard as heck."

Sims Jr. scored a game-high 27 points and grabbed seven rebounds. Fellow junior Jaylen Jeter added 13 points for the Bulldogs, who shot just 38.3 percent from the floor and made 22 of 30 free throws.

There is a little bit of a what-could-have-been feeling to this McKinley team, which missed on a Federal League title by a game and missed on a spot in the district final by just a couple of plays.

It also should be noted McKinley (15-9) had one senior starter coming off an 11-13 season in 2022-23.

"We'd look good, then we'd look young, and that kind of mirrored our record," said Weatherspoon, a state champion as a player at McKinley, in his first season as head coach. "But these guys came in and worked hard every day. They took to me and my culture. They were coachable. And we definitely got better. I think this season will bode well for us in the future."

For the Golden Eagles, the immediate future is a shot at a district championship.

"We just knew we had to win this game," McElroy said. "That's all we kept telling ourselves: Stay focused, stay locked in. Just find a way. Everybody needs to stay together, shoot their shots and play their roles."

Reach Josh at josh.weir@cantonrep.com 

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This article originally appeared on The Repository: Ohio high school boys basketball district: GlenOak vs. Canton McKinley