WEST CHESTER TWP. — Kevin Higgins and his Hamilton High School boys basketball team didn’t mind the extra motivation that was handed to them.
Cooper Matthews scored a game-high 24 points, Andrea Holden added 10 and the Big Blue stormed out to an 18-1 lead on their way to a 46-35 Division I sectional tournament victory over Talawanda on Thursday night at Lakota West.
“We heard they wanted to play us,” said Matthews, a senior guard. “If you’re going to want to play us, you’re going to have to play with us. We came out with energy — firing out to a quick lead and took it from there.”
“Any motivation is key,” Higgins added. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. You use any motivation that you can to get the guys off to that good start. That start really helps.”
Hamilton (10-13) moves on to face Moeller on Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 7:15 p.m. at Lakota West.
“This feels really good,” Matthews said. “We don’t want to dwell on it for too long. But we will take this one in, practice tomorrow, come back with energy and turn it up for next game.”
Big Blue’s intensity right out of the gate immediately set the tone. The Brave turned the ball over 10 times in the first half, resulting in nine easy points for Hamilton.
“It’s hard to replicate a team with the athleticism of Hamilton,” said Talawanda coach Connor Roberts, who finished his first season at the helm. “Hamilton has the best rim protector in southwest Ohio and arguably Ohio. Holden can jump out of the gym.
“Their guards got up in us and pressured the ball,” Roberts added. “I think my initial gameplan wasn’t the right gameplan. I had to scrap and adjust, and I think once I did that, we leveled it off. We battled back.”
Talawanda (15-8) got a team-high 16 points and 10 rebounds from senior forward Logan Smith, who scored nine during the Brave’s second-half surge — a 19-8 run — that brought it to within 32-31 with 6:43 left to play.
Hamilton held Talawanda to four points the rest of the way and closed it out with a 14-4 run.
“It sucks to go out and lose a game like this,” Smith said. “I think we all know we could have played a little bit better. But nobody expected us to be at this point. People doubted us from the beginning.
“This group of guys has gotten stronger each year,” Smith added. “We’ve been through so much with three different head coaches, and I couldn’t be any happier for the guys that have stayed here and have stuck through it.”
Higgins said his Big Blue showed signs of uncharacteristic play at times Thursday, but they were able to adjust while fighting off the Brave’s comeback.
“We had the lead, and I think we took some quick shots,” Higgins said. “We made a couple early, so we got to thinking we could actually make those all game. That’s not really us. I think it let them get some opportunities. Their big kid (Smith) had a really good second half. But I think we did a good job on the guards to take away their 3s. That was the goal. The big kid wasn’t our No. 1 priority. It was their guards that shoot 3s.”
Isaiah Meade-Moss scored seven points for Talawanda, which graduates five seniors — including Smith, Trevor Norris, Logan Kent, Caleb Kuykendoll and Malyki McRoberts.
“For our group to battle back like that,” Roberts said, “I’m so proud of them. I can talk about the game some more, and I gladly will, but what people need to remember is that this is Talawanda. … These guys came out and won a league title. That’s what people need to remember. This group is incredible.”
Roberts said the program’s transformation within the last year was both rewarding and exhausting. The Brave completed their first winning season in over a decade to go along with a first-ever Southwest Ohio Conference championship.
“It wasn’t easy,” Roberts said. “It was bad — tons of adversity. The entire thing was just adversity, adversity, adversity. I could go back to so many times when this group was down and battled back.
“When I look at our season, our goal was to win a SWOC title,” Roberts added. “We had three goals at the beginning of the year. The first goal was to have a winning record. We accomplished that. The second goal was to win a SWOC title. We had to go 3-0 after our Edgewood loss down the stretch — three straight wins. The last one was at Ross on their senior night. That was an incredible accomplishment. The third goal was to win a tournament game. Gosh, we were close on that.”
