SHARONVILLE — Senior guard Cooper Ollis scored a team-high 16 points as the Badin High School boys basketball team lost to Trotwood-Madison 67-51 on Wednesday in a Division III regional semifinal at Princeton.
“I feel like we were battling the whole game,” Ollis said. “But really it came down to the first quarter.”
Badin came into the game defensively, allowing 36.9 points per game — which is first in the Greater Catholic League Coed.
However, it was a tall task to guard Trotwood’s high-flying offense, which is scoring 73.8 points per game. Senior Jermiel Atkins — a Kentucky football signee — was a key headliner to stop defensively, according to Badin coach CJ Fleming.
“All credit to Trotwood. They came out and kicked our butt,” Fleming said. “We wanted them to shoot 3s because we wanted to help out on the big (Atkins), and they ended up doing both.”
Trotwood-Madison came out quickly with a 7-0 run, forcing Fleming to call a timeout early in the first quarter. After the break, Ollis got Badin on the board with a 3, but that led to Trotwood scoring the game’s next 11 points — ending the first quarter 18-3.
“I don’t think we came out ready,” Ollis said. “The whole week of practice we talked about that they weren’t the best shooting team. I think they shot 60% from 3 tonight, that’s what hurt us in the end.”
Fleming said the slow start was the deciding factor in the end.
“Early I thought we played on our heels,” Fleming said. “We had a couple of bad turnovers, which led to quick buckets.”
Trotwood-Madison coach Carl Blanton said the fast start helped his team out tonight.
“We wanted to come out and take the first shot — take the first blow,” Blanton said. “To make sure we jumped on them right away to impose our will. We play aggressive so we wanted to get up the floor, to make the game at our pace.”
Badin came out of the slow start and went on a 7-0 run cutting the deficit to 24-13 and forcing Blanton to use a timeout. Badin outscored Trotwood in the second quarter 15-14 and was down 32-18 despite only 30% from the field and committing nine turnovers.
Atkins led all scorers with 11 at the half for Trotwood, while Daveon Arnold added nine points. Ollis led Badin with nine points.
In the second half, it was still back and forth, but Badin could never capitalize after being down 12. Trotwood stormed back to lead by 20 and put the game out of reach by leading 60-39 in the fourth quarter.
Ollis was hit with a technical foul after Trotwood’s Baron White made a layup and was called for the foul.
Trotwood-Madison will head to Xavier University’s Cintas Center to take on the Aiken Falcons in the OHSAA regional finals at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Trotwood handed Aiken its only loss of the season on Feb 13.
