Dixie’s season came to an end this weekend at the sectional final game in University of Dayton arena.  It capped off a 3 game tournament run with wins against NorthEastern and a game last Tuesday against Carlisle.  But Versailles, a perennial basketball powerhouse, overwhelmed Dixie on Friday night.  Still it was a successful season for the Greyhounds especially when you consider the adversity that the team had to overcome.

But first lets recap this past week.  Dixie played game two of the of state tournament on Tuesday against Carlisle.  It was the third matchup between the two league foes.  The first two games were split between the two teams, so this would be the rubber match for bragging rights for the season.  Dixie had lost their season opener against Carlisle, but rebounded for a win late in the season.

Carlisle used a full court man to man defense against Dixie.  But it was generally ineffective. Dixie got the lead and kept it for the game. They did run into some foul trouble as John Issacs and Mike Smiley had to go to the bench in the first half. But despite this, Dixie maintained the lead -  Carlisle was down by 5 at the half.

With Carlisle only down by 2 possessions,  Dixie needed some breathing room.  Mike Smiley and then Andrew Barnett quickly sunk three point shots coming out of the locker room and suddenly Dixie was on a roll. Carlisle took a time out to cool down the hot shooting of the Greyhounds, but they just kept the pressure on.   Carlisle did finish out the third quarter strong, but were still down by 10 entering the 4^th quarter.   About midway thru the last quarter Dixie took a time out and set up their end game strategy.  They executed a slowdown to perfection and went home with the victory.

Friday night the team played against battle tested Versailles.  When you don’t play in UD arena that often it can be intimidating.  You are playing on a college size floor in a huge arena, a lot different from the close confines of a high school gymnasium.   That was a factor and Versailles is just a physical, dominating team.  Dixie missed some inside shots early and then never did seem to get into much of a rhythm.  The team just seemed overwhelmed with it all and never did get into a rhythm on offense.

Dixie took some early timeouts to try and right the ship, but they couldn’t make much headway. Defensively they tried their trapping half court zone, but Versailles move the ball too well for Dixie to pull in many turnovers.  When the buzzer sounded for the last time, Dixie had an uncharacteristic double digit loss 63-36.  Still it was a good season overall for Dixie, despite losing one of their better players early in the season they overcame adversity and got to play in the sectional final.

“We’ve had the most success this year against teams that we were physically better than them, “stated coach Creamer after the game, “and we’ve struggled against teams that could match our athleticism.  Not only could they match us athletically, they took it to another level.  We don’t feel that it was our best effort, but we got beat by a much better team.”

On the season, “We were second place outright in the Buckeye Division, we were the only league school to knock [division champ] Waynesville off.  We won two tournament games for the first time in a number of years.  We have lots of things to be proud of. We would have liked to have finished better, but we can’t dwell on that.  We need to get back to the drawing board for next year so that advancing to the sectional final is the rule, not the exception.”

The seniors, “Having completed my second year at Dixie, this year’s seniors have had me for two years.  We have gone through a great maturing process together and they have shown the way for the young kids. They bought in to what we are trying to do. Their efforts are greatly appreciated.  We had times this season when we could have packed it in and our seniors did not let that happen.  We had issues internally and our seniors didn’t let things go South. I feel badly for them, you don’t want their last high school game to end the way that this one ended.  But they did a lot of great things to get us here.”