“I was not thinking about basketball back then,” grinned Smith, who was 3 years old when the Brave last defeated the Rams (51-46) in a season-opening win on Nov. 23, 2007.
For first-year coach Connor Roberts, it was all smiles, too, as Talawanda dropped Badin to 0-7, its worst start in program history.
“I think our guys really went after it tonight, which was awesome,” said a gleaming Roberts, whose Brave moved to 4-3. “They competed. They did everything we asked them to do. We made a few adjustments during the week. We looked at our offense the first six games of the year and weren’t happy with it. We’ve been defending well but wanted to push the tempo more.
“We got off to a slow start in the scoring column, maybe just adjusting to Badin’s pressure,” Roberts added. “It was kind of nice, though, with Badin actually pressuring us most of the game because that allowed us to play fast like we talked about. It kind of really fit right in with our game plan.”
Second-year Badin coach Pat Kreke watched as his Rams lost their 10th game in a row and 16 out of the last 17 dating back to last season.
“Talawanda did a great job,” Kreke said. “Congratulate them. They played a wonderful game.”
Badin played with more intensity out of the gate and used a 13-3 run that was capped off by a Connor Wright 3-pointer that gave the Rams a 19-11 lead with 4:35 left in the second quarter.
Talawanda responded with a 9-2 run to end the first half on Cale Leitch’s pull-up jumper at the buzzer — cutting the Badin lead to 21-20.
“That’s when I thought we started to push the pace on them,” said Smith, a 6-foot-4 senior. “We really wanted to come out there and go hard at the start and not start stagnant like in a lot of games. We moved the ball around great and we got good shot opportunities for all of the guys.”
Talawanda’s ball movement was nearly flawless in the second half, allowing the Brave to get open looks from behind the arc.
The Brave hit six of their seven 3-pointers in the final 16 minutes, including Leitch’s trey to gave Talawanda the lead for good at 31-30 with 1:55 left in the third.
Talawanda got some cushion when Bryce James closed out a 13-2 run by draining a 3-pointer to give the hosts a 41-32 lead with just under five minutes left to play.
“When we really started to attack the basket and had some aggression, we looked really good,” Roberts said. “We’re really looking for our guys to lock in and finish possession by possession, which allowed us to come out with the win kind of comfortably down the stretch.”
Leitch finished with 12 points and five rebounds for the Brave, who fired 7 of 16 (43.8%) from 3-point range and outrebounded Badin 36-22. Malyki McRoberts chipped in with 10 points.
Leading the way for Badin was Aidan Brown (12 points) and Pate Goldberg (11 points).
UP NEXT
Talawanda hosts Loveland on Thursday, while Badin entertains Northwest on Friday.
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