Eagles to face Massillon Washington in regional semifinals

The irony of Wednesday’s boys basketball matchup with Massillon Washington is not lost on Avon coach Mike Fitch.

In case it’s not clear to everyone, Massillon Washington is also known as just Massillon, the place that many consider to be the home of high school football. You know, Paul Brown, Earle Bruce, Lee Tressel and the like.

But Avon knows a thing or two about football as well. In fact, according to the OHSAA, the two-time defending Division II state champions have won twice as many state titles on the gridiron as the Tigers (just don’t mention it to a Massillon fanatic).

But when the two meet at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the College of Wooster's Timken Gymnasium in a Division II regional semifinal, it will be on the hardwood, not on turf.

“It’s funny,” Fitch said. “It’s kind of cool to me. Honestly, I would never think that we would play Massillon in boys basketball. But it’s also exciting that it’s turning into basketball games.”

Avon is coming off a 49-42 victory Saturday in the district final against Medina Highland, another school that has built a strong football resume. As happened this past fall in Avon’s 36-19 football victory in a regional final, it was the defense that made the difference against the hoopster Hornets and their star, Jushua Butcher.

“What stands out to me was our effort on defense,” Fitch said. “We knew that they had a really good scorer who nearly averaged 20 points per game, and he only scored eight, and three came from the free throw line. We knew defensively that we had to be physical. I believe our conference is a physical athletic conference, and we wanted to bring that to that game. We were getting up on him, and he was so exhausted that they had to take him out a few times to rest.”

As has been the case all season, the tandem of starter Dean Abdul and defensive specialist Caden Clapham made life miserable for Butcher and all of the Hornets, as the Eagles dominated the game on the defensive end. The question is, can there be a repeat performance against Massillon, a team that averages better than 80 points per game, has gone over the 100-point threshold twice and has topped 90 five times?

But before addressing that, let’s take a step back. This is the second consecutive year that Avon has reached the regional semifinals. Last year, also playing at the College of Wooster, the Eagles dropped a 53-37 decision to New Albany in their semifinal matchup. But Avon had five seniors on that team and four of them started. How did the Eagles get back to this point so quickly after graduating so much?

“It’s awesome,” Fitch said. “It’s a credit to the players and the coaching staff. We had four new starters in the district championship game this year. Joey Ziegler’s the only returning starter. And only two of the other starters had ever played varsity basketball. (Sam Griffiths) played freshman ball last year, and (Gavyn Kittelberger) was at Lutheran West.”

Ziegler, a 6-foot-3 junior guard, was named first team All-district in the Lakes district after averaging 15 points per game in the regular season. Brooks Good, a 6-4 junior, and Kittelberger each earned honorable mention honors on the All-district team. Also in the rotation are sophomore post player Holden Krugman and Trevor Sykora, a sophomore guard. There are only three seniors on the roster, and Kittelberger is the only 12th-grader who starts, which makes the return to regionals all the more improbable.

“You know, it was a big crapshoot how we were going to do this year with a lot of young guys and their inexperience,” Fitch said. “At one point we were 1-2, so to finish the regular season at 16-6 was pretty awesome. One hundred percent, regionals was our first goal. Obviously, conference is a big goal that we want to do, but we said our goal every year is to get back to regionals.”

Now, back to Massillon. The Tigers are 23-1 and haven’t lost since just before Christmas. They dropped a 74-71 decision to North Canton Hoover, and then got back to their winning ways four days later with a 108-83 trouncing of Elyria. For those who forgot, Elyria defeated the Eagles by 14 points in mid-January and then completed a sweep over Avon with a six-point victory in the final game of the regular season.

So, the Eagles are likely to have their hands full. Massillon has four players who score in double figures: Xavier Williams at 17.0 points, Giorgio Jackson at 15.6, Jadyce Thigpen at 15.1, and Braylon Gamble at 14.1. Williams and Gamble were named first team in the Inland All-district team, and Jackson and Thigpen made second team. Head coach Josh Hose was the district’s coach of the year.

“You can probably predict some things about them,” Fitch said. “They’re very quick, they’re athletic. They finish at the rim. They can shoot it, too. Similar to Elyria or Berea-Midpark, they’re going to get up and pressure us and try to create turnovers that lead to points. So that’s definitely a goal. We have to focus on not turning the ball over.”

Turnovers have been a recurring issue for the Eagles, and if they aren’t careful with the ball, that could be the difference between winning and losing.

“We’re going to have to take care of the ball, because if we have a couple turnovers like we did against Highland, those will be alley-oop dunks or fastbreak finishes at the rim,” Fitch said. “Even in the basketball world we call them pick-sixes. We need our turnovers to be dead ball turnovers, 5 second or 10 second calls. Those are way better than fastbreak turnovers. So, definitely, taking care of the basketball is going to be huge.”

Fitch said another key to the game will be the opening minutes, as the Tigers are good at forcing teams to have to come from behind.

“The biggest thing is going to be weathering the storm,” he said. “They come out really hard the first two minutes, so we’ve got to weather that storm and make sure it’s still a close game two or three minutes into it. It’s really tough to always be battling back.”