Upper Arlington gets defensive in 40-32 win over Dublin Jerome

COLUMBUS, OH – After winning just three games during the 2020-21 season, the Upper Arlington girls basketball team finds itself in a second consecutive Division I district semifinal.

One of the biggest reasons the Golden Bears have turned things around so quickly under second-year head coach John Wanke has been their focus on making defense be a key aspect of their team culture, and that was on display in a second-round home tournament game Saturday against 19th-seeded Dublin Jerome.

The ninth seed for the district tournament, UA was leading by just two points with a little more than a minute to play when its defense forced turnovers on four consecutive possessions by the Celtics.

The Bears’ 40-32 victory improved their record to 17-6 and sends them into a district semifinal February 22nd against third-seeded Olentangy Liberty.

“A lot of what we talk about is getting consecutive stops, and we want to have that consecutive-stop mindset,” Wanke said. “Kind of down the stretch is when games are won or lost with your defense, so our team I thought defended at a high level and it allowed us to make those critical stops and pull ahead. We had a great week of preparation, a pretty good understanding of what they were going to try to do, and that last quarter, I thought we defended at a high level.”

The outside shooting of senior Ceylone Brooks, a first-team all-OCC-Central Division honoree, also played a key role in the victory.

The Bears scored the game’s first eight points before Jerome got back to within 13-9 by the end of the first quarter.

Brooks hit two 3-pointers in the second quarter and had 15 points by halftime as UA led 19-18.

Then in the third quarter Jerome took a 24-21 lead on a basket by senior forward Lisa Kuhlman, but the Bears closed the period on an 8-0 run and made it 32-24 on a 3-pointer by Brooks early in the fourth quarter.

“She’s averaging about 14 to 15 points and was just recognized as a first-team all-conference player, and she deserved it,” Wanke said. “She’s a senior, and this is the time of year when seniors have to lead. I’m very proud of her. I thought she performed at a high level, and she made some very big baskets when it was important.”

Jerome cut it to 34-32 on a three-point play by junior guard Kendall Baird and got the ball back with a chance to tie after UA threw away the inbounds pass, but the Celtics turned it over and Brooks scored on the other end to give her team a four-point lead.

Junior guard Quinn Buttermore and sophomore forward Tatum Thrush each made two free throws during the final minute to seal the win.

“We kind of locked in,” Brooks said. “We had a couple mental miscues. It’s tournament time, so the emotions are high but we started to take pride on the defensive end. We have this thing where we try to hold teams to between 30 and 40 points per game and we’ve been pretty successful at that most of the season. We know if we keep to that, we have a pretty good chance of winning.”

Brooks finished with 23 points for UA, which gets its third shot at Liberty after losing to the Patriots 40-33 on December 9th and 57-40 on January 27th.

Liberty defeated 31st-seeded Centennial 58-13 on Saturday in a second-round game to set up the rematch.

“We want that game,” Brooks said. “That’s definitely a revenge game for us and if we keep playing the way we play and keep playing our hardest, we have a really good chance of winning. (Liberty) just hit some really tough shots and we had defensive lapses the first two times, but every time we play them, we go toe-to-toe with them.”

Jerome tied the program record for wins in a season while finishing 14-10 under first-year head coach Karli Burkett, who is a former UA assistant.

Baird finished with 11 points and Kuhlman scored eight.

“I could not be more proud of my girls,” Burkett said. “They fought every single day and it’s all about the girls. They’ve done unbelievably and could have easily just have shut me out after having different coaching changes throughout the years, but they bought into what we asked them to do. The senior leaders changed the culture of the program. We fought until the end.”