'Lot of poise there': Brayden Gross-less Louisville tops Medina, OHSAA district final next
ALLIANCE — One of the Louisville High School boys basketball team's Big 3 players sat on the bench in street clothes during Wednesday night's district semifinal. The other two combined for the same number of field goals as him ... zero.
Still, the Leopards live on. Sounds like a program win for "The Program."
Louisville, with junior big man Brayden Gross unavailable because of an ankle injury, held off Medina 49-44 in a grinder of a tournament game at Alliance High School's Harry Fails Gymnasium.
"The Program," a moniker head coach Tom Siegfried uses often for what he's built at Louisville over the last 17 years, moves on to Saturday's 2 p.m. district championship at Alliance, where the 23-2 Leopards will face the winner of Thursday's semifinal with Canton McKinley and GlenOak.
Siegfried believes the 6-foot-6 Gross — injured during the sectional final win against Firestone — will be ready to go Saturday. The rest of the Leopards were ready Wednesday in his stead, even with Medina making life difficult on the offensive end for Louisville's other two stars, senior wing Hayden Nigro and junior point guard Beau Siegfried.
Tate Aljancic produced team highs of 15 points and eight rebounds, while fellow junior Avery Andrecjik added 11 points. They each connected on three 3-pointers as Louisville survived shooting just 13-for-41 from the floor and 6-of-23 from 3-point range.
"I think that's what's special about us," Aljancic said. "It sucks not to have BG. He's one of the best players in the county. But it just felt, like, calm. ... There was a lot of poise there."
Nigro, who became Louisville's all-time leading scorer during the sectional final win (passing the previous mark set by Aljancic's brother Will) finished with seven points Wednesday. Siegfried, the head coach's son, scored three points. They average more than 30 points a game combined.
It wasn't as if either played poorly. The Bees walled up and used their size to challenge the hard-driving Nigro while making sure to not allow Siegfried open looks from the perimeter.
Both players were patient and found open teammates, such as when Nigro whipped passes to Andrecjik and Aljancic for back-to-back 3s late in the third quarter that gave Louisville the lead for good.
"Our goal was to make their secondary players beat us, and they did," Medina head coach Chris Hassinger said. "So credit to those other kids."
In addition to Aljancic and Andrecjik's contributions, juniors Kolton Loy and Ashton Marshall combined for 13 points and eight rebounds for Louisville.
"No one understood how good the rest of these guys are," Tom Siegfried said. "They work their asses off all offseason to have this moment, and they stepped up."
No. 26 seed Medina (14-11) is a battled-tested Greater Cleveland Conference team that sought its fifth straight district final appearance. Hassinger said the Bees spent the last three weeks preparing for No. 4 seed Louisville, and they certainly looked ready.
The Bees never trailed by more than seven points and held a one-point lead as late as the 3:31 mark of the third quarter.
Louisville led 37-34 entering the fourth quarter. With two minutes left, it was 37-35.
Louisville didn't make a field goal for the final 9:56 of game time but held on thanks to its defense and some clutch free throw shooting. The Leopards made 12 of 14 foul shots in the final 1:50.
Medina committed 12 turnovers to only five for Louisville. Beau Siegfried played a major role in both of those numbers. He handled whatever pressure Medina threw at him, especially down the stretch. He also came up with three steals and probably forced another three or four turnovers with deflections and pressure.
"Beau, I bet you, got locked up on switches down on their post guys six to eight times," Tom Siegfried said. "I don't think they ever scored once on him. His toughness in the post helped us because we really like to switch everything and we don't really want to hedge."
Senior Brock Beech scored a game-high 18 points for Medina, which had rattled off quality wins against Mentor, Strongsville and St. Vincent-St. Mary in February.
"We're really disappointed," Hassinger said. "We thought we could get back to a district championship. Sometimes you run into a juggernaut like these guys."
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This article originally appeared on The Repository: High school boys basketball district semifinal Louisville vs Medina
