Springboro repeats as district champs; Springfield, Stebbins fall short

Senior Springboro guard Bryn Martin led all scorers with 17 points.

“I just think we came out with different energy this second half, and we just talked about in the locker room we’ve got to take pride in defense,” Martin said. “Not only with within the team, but with ourselves, like don’t let your man score on you. And they had four threes, and that’s what they do, in the first half. So we talked about that, and I feel like we did a good job taking that away the second half and just came up with more energy and intensity defensively and just took care of business.”

The Panthers will be back in Fairborn on Wednesday night to face No. 1 seed Upper Arlington or No. 3 Grove City, who played later Saturday night.

Seton scored the last five points of the first quarter to take a 12-7 lead, but Martin tied the game at 16 with a free throw with 5:15 left in the second quarter, and McKenzie Jones gave the Panthers the lead with another free throw less than two minutes later.

The teams traded the lead twice the rest of the half before a free throw by Kaitlyn Hess, Seton’s leading scorer on the season, tied the game at 22 with 33 seconds left.

The second half was a defensive clinic from the Panthers, who shut the Cincinnatians out in the third quarter and led by as many as 16 in the final minutes.

After making half their 16 shots in the first half, the Saints went 2 for 13 in the second.

The defensive effort prevented Springboro’s own struggles on offense from mattering. Martin, a University of Washington signee, was the only Panther to score in double figures or make more than two field goals.

Brooke Clear made two early 3-pointers and finished with six points for Springboro while Aniya Trent added six rebounds and Ava Wade grabbed five.

The Panthers prevailed after two other area teams faltered on the same floor earlier in the day.

In the first game, No. 2 seed Harrison beat No. 1 seed Stebbins 53-32 in Division II.

Battling foul trouble, junior guard Aubrey Fritz led the Indians (16-9) with eight points while Lily Grzegorzewski added four.

Coach Autumn Johnson’s team trailed 28-12 at the half but outscored the Wildcats 18-9 in the third quarter to make it a game again going to the final stanza.

Harrison slammed the door in the fourth, though, as Alli Robertson scored a pair of baskets to start a dominant final eight minutes for Harrison, who advanced to a regional semifinal at Princeton on Tuesday.

“We told them at halftime you can either lay over and die, or you can actually get some gumption and come out and play hard and see what happens,” Johnson said. “There was another point this year, we played (Tippecanoe) and we were down by 16 at the end of the first and we ended up winning the game. So we just reiterated we’ve done this before. We’ve been here before. We did give up a good fight, and then I think got a little tired.”

Credit: Marcus Hartman

Credit: Marcus Hartman

In game two, upstart Springfield ran into a buzzsaw from Mason in Division I.

The top-seeded Comets (23-1) scored the last six points of a back-and-forth first quarter and maintained that lead heading to halftime.

They stretched it to 37-26, and the No. 4 seed Wildcats (12-13) couldn’t get closer than six the rest of the way as they competed in a district final for the first time since North and South recombined in 2008.

Credit: Marcus Hartman

Credit: Marcus Hartman

Junior guard Milly Portis led Springfield with 20 points while Jaela Johnson, the team’s only senior, added 11 points.

“I’ve got to give some props to our senior, Jaela Johnson,” said first-year Springfield head coach Brooks Russell. “She was in the program for four years. She had four different head coaches. She went through a lot of adversity, and she leaves our program with a district runner-up medal around her neck.

“She deserves a lot of credit for the way this program has changed over the last four years.”

Credit: Marcus Hartman

Credit: Marcus Hartman

Springfield held West Virginia signee Madison Parrish to 14 points on 3-for-17 shooting, but Anna Habra picked up the slack for Mason with 26 points and seven rebounds.

“(Parrish) is a great player,” Russell said. “We felt like we contained her pretty good. She made a couple tough shots in the first half, which we were okay with letting her shoot and make those.

“We knew that we were gonna have to limit them and try to slow them down. We couldn’t shut them down, and eventually they got into their flow, and they were able to get some shots off and score some points on us.”