By Frank Wolf
It was a battle from the opening tip-off until the final buzzer sounded Tuesday night. The Olmsted Owls put a six-game winning streak on the line against MST and came away with a big 46-39 win in front of a nice crowd at the old Seneca Vocational High-School.
Don’t let the final score fool you, this was a tight match-up. Olmsted’s Naseem Baynes hit two clutch free throws in the last minute of play to ice the Indians and improve their overall record to 10-2. “Our team knew this was going to be a tough game it always is against them” said the senior forward. “We took what they were giving us but it was a battle” Baynes added, he finished with 13. Teammate Daniel Reid led the Owls with 14, and his three-pointer in the final two minutes of the game that proved to be the difference.
The Indians trailed at the half 17-16 but stayed right with the Owls through much of the final quarter. They were down by 4 with less than three minutes on the clock. MST used a 6-0 run to take the lead 39-38 in under thirty seconds, capped off by a thunderous left-handed dunk by Jason Chapman, two of his 10 on the night. Unfortunately, the lead was short-lived as Olmsted hit two quick long-range 3’s back-to-back to reclaim the lead.
“I don’t know if you can say that necessarily changed the momentum but it certainly didn’t help” Coach Scott Kirsch said after the loss. “We had good looks but our shots weren’t falling. It was a great game just not our night.” The Indians fall to 6-4. David Anderson led the team in blocks (5), rebounds (12) and chipped in 4 points, Domonic Prince had 8 boards and also had 4 points in the loss.
“We’ve been working hard and had some really good practices heading into this one” Owls head coach Andrew Bush said. “We had a big win over the weekend and tonight, now we have Maritime tomorrow, it just gets tougher from here” he added.
Baynes was the player of the game, in addition to his 13 points he added 13 boards had a block and 4 steals.
