By JACK CLARK
jackclark@mvn.net
DIX — The 57th Rome Invitational Basketball Tournament concluded on Friday night with the Woodlawn Warriors capturing the championship by way of a 54-48 victory over the Rome Green Hornets.
In fact, the top six seeds in the tourney finished in that order. Woodlawn was seeded No. 1 and Rome was No. 2.
The Raccoon Blue Devils (3) defeated the Summersville Wildcats (4), 60-44, in the third-place game. The Waltonville Spartans (5) were the victors over the Opdyke-Belle Rive Roadrunners (6), 47-30, in the consolation championship game.
The deciding factors of the RIT championship game occurred in the first half, because at halftime, the Warriors held a 24-18 advantage. Each of the two teams scored 30 points in the second half.
“That was a well-played game by two good teams,” said Warrior coach Matt Patterson. “They (Rome) took our best two players out of the game and we had to have guys come in and make shots.”
The Green Hornets held Chase Phelps and Jacob Robinson to just nine points each.
Woodlawn sixth-grader Ross Owens led the Warriors in scoring, finishing with 12 points.
“I knew that he (Owens) was going to be a good player, but I didn’t know how much we were going to lean on him,” Patterson said.
“They came out in a triangle-and-two and he knew that he was going to have to make some shots. Eventually, he got going. If he gets hot, he can get a bunch of points. He’s just going to get better as he gets older.”
Cody Collins also netted 10 points for Woodlawn.
Rome was led by Dominic Harris, with a game-high 18 points. Calvin Miley finished with 10 points and Ryan Miller had seven.
“That was a great game,” said Green Hornet coach John Burkett. “We wanted to stop (Chase) Phelps and (Jacob) Robinson. We held down the guys that we wanted to. What we had to do in order to be in the game was to stop them. Then, during the game, (Ross) Owens and (Brett) Harris showed up hitting threes. It was one of those bittersweet things.”
In the third-place game, Nate King led all scorers with 26 points for the Blue Devils. Donte Rush added 14 and Chase Mercer finished with 10.
Caleb Burns led the Wildcats with 15 points. Austin Martin had 12 and Enrique Lum’vaughn added four points.
In the Consolation Championship game, Braden Kitowski led all scorers with 19 points for the Spartans. Hunter Coggins added 13.
Luke Wilson led the Roadrunners with 11 points. Wyatt Beaty had eight.
