During seven state finals at UD Arena there was much to catch the eye, more heads to count, and concession choices to consider.
Dayton, OH – Seen, heard and eaten.
And I will start with ‘eaten’ from the boys state basketball championships at venerable UD Arena. Because any lifelong sportswriter worth his salt, always takes advantage when food is free.
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And I got my fill of salt (nitrites to be more specific) at the concession stand with my $15 voucher courtesy of the OHSAA. Sonny Fulks, a connoisseur of such eateries, encouraged me to try the Rudy Dog for my Saturday between-games lunch.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
He called it the weiner that sticks with you for 24 hours, and not just to your ribs. The bun it’s served in looked like a Mohican canoe.
Well, that 24 hours has come and gone and my iron gut is no worse for the wear. The Rudy Dog – at least a foot long – went down smooth with four packets of Gulden’s brown mustard. I figured if I was going to feel anything Sunday, it would have been the gut bomb that was the wedge fries lathered in cheese and bacon bits.
I am happy to report, as Sunday’s March Madness tips off on the 65-inch, I am resting comfortably on my couch. No ill effects. No side effects. No after effects.
Dressed to the nines
For the rest of my life, no matter the reason that calls for me to dress up, I will never look as sartorially splendid as the five members of the Marion Local coaching staff. Who knew there was such a haberdashery in Maria Stein.
Dressed….Coach Kurt Goettemoeller in the familiar colors of success.
Kurt Goettemoeller and his staff were nattily attired in their Royal blue and Green Bay yellow school colors. The suits were blue over white shirts with yellow ties. Their team wasn’t as sharp in a tough loss in the Division VI final.
But the award for best-dressed coaching staff of the weekend goes to … Marion Local.
Good luck wrangling Gator
Gator Nichols won’t stick in my memory for just his name. That’s a good start. But his 36-point performance in Zanesville Maysville’s Division IV championship victory over Cleveland Glenville was one of the best games you will see a kid play in any division.
His coach and the Glenville coach praised his play with superlatives. But Gator wouldn’t bite when I asked him about his game and the mindset he brings to scoring.
“I’m not saying I’m trying to score, but as a team we’re trying to score,” he said. “I’m going to go out there and create for my teammates. And if I get an open look, I take that shot. But I trust everybody around me. If they’re open, they’re open. They’re going to knock down that shot. And they always get me open.”
He was open a lot on Friday. And when he wasn’t, he made a lot of shots anyway.
In defense of Turtle
Willoughby Cornerstone Christian coach Babe Kwasniak spoke out after his team’s loss to Russia in the Division VII final about being his son being slighted in the Mr. Basketball voting.
Quinn “Turtle” Kwasniak recently broke Jon Diebler’s state career scoring record. He scored over 3,300 points and set the career 3-pointer record with 572. On Saturday he scored 38 points in his final game. He made six 3-pointers, two from the OHSAA logo that made everyone in the arena turn and make sure the person next to them saw it.
No shot too far…Cornerstone’s ‘Turtle’ Kwasniak launches against Russia, the all-time Ohio leading scorer in high school basketball.
But Babe wasn’t surprised. He’s the one who gives his son permission to shoot those shots that would make other coaches pull that player for a serious talk on the bench.
“If you came to any of our games, he did that all season,” Babe said. “These people hating on him – you can take those shots by yourself with no one playing defense, and you wouldn’t touch those numbers.”
Babe was just warming up.
“I know he wasn’t worthy of a single even nomination or vote for Mr. Basketball,” he said with as much sarcasm as possible. “But if you guys actually saw us play …”
The Ohio Prep Sports Media Association selects the all-district and all-state teams. Each of the state’s seven districts, when they gather to choose the all-district teams, nominates a player for Mr. Basketball. Districts are free to nominate more than one player.
The Northeast Lakes District nominated junior Marcus Johnson of Garfield Heights. He was the obvious and clear winner for the award across the state. But that district could have honored Kwasniak with a nomination, and Johnson still would have won. Sometimes two nominees could split the vote and cost one of them the award. But not this year.
Babe’s defense of his son was balanced by his comments about how his son should have shot more in the first quarter and how that might have helped the team. Clearly, the father has pushed the son like good coaches push their most talented players to be better than they think they can be.
Turtle will follow in his father’s footsteps and his older brother’s footsteps as a student-athlete at Army. Turtle is used to the tough love he will get as a cadet and basketball player at West Point. He didn’t see his dad’s comments coming.
“It surprises me,” Turtle said. “He never really compliments me, especially at home. Nobody sees how he yells at me other times. But it surprises me right now.”
The Ohio Seminoles
Seminoles in Ohio…? Apparently at one time a few left the Sunshine State for the more favorable humidity and sinus health of southeast Ohio. Go figure.
Monroe Central, from the town of Woodsfield in Monroe County, made its first state tournament appearance. Their nickname is Seminoles. And that got me to thinking while I was digesting the Rudy Dog.
Why does a school from a southeastern Ohio county along the Ohio River have a nickname like Seminoles? I consulted Wikipedia, and I was right to wonder. The Seminole tribe, just as I thought, is indigenous to Florida. No amount of Google searches revealed the answer. But they looked good in their Florida State colors.
And they played well, their fans traveled well, and they defeated Marion Local with quickness and grit.
Attendance a welcome sight
Attendance for state championship games enjoyed an increase after declining by 64% since 2014. Perhaps playing them on Friday and Saturday instead of Sunday was a factor in the highest average attendance since 2019. Perhaps the number of first-time trips for some of the teams helped. Whatever the reasons, the volume in UD Arena was higher on the decibel meter.
The average attendance for the first year of seven finals was 6,360, a 40% increase over last year.
Rock legend Bono was at the game and shared some road stories with a UD Arena security man.
Some blamed declining attendance because the tournament moved to Dayton in 2021. But the decline began in Columbus. From 2014 to 2019, the final six years at the Schottenstein Center, attendance for finals declined 30%. That’s an average per game attendance drop from 12,585 to 8,844.
Ignoring the 2021 finals because of attendance restrictions due to Covid, the attendance continued to decline in Dayton at a rate of 49%. The average for finals, which were held on Sunday, was 6,008 in 2022, 4,603 in 2023 and 4,533 in 2024.
But this year began with 7,178 fans at the opener, the Division III final between Cincinnati Aiken and Louisville. That game marked the biggest crowd since the Centerville-Pickerington Central Division I final drew 8,561 in 2022.
Olentangy Orange and Reynoldsburg in Saturday night’s Division I final drew the largest crowd at 7,545. Marion Local and Monroe Central drew 7,285 in Division IV, and Russia and Cornerstone Christian drew 6,466 in Division VII.
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