By SPENCER BATES
OLEAN — Even before tip-off, the energy in the Olean gym was palpable.
There were nearly no seats left unoccupied and the student section was crowded, in full voice and on its feet.
It was senior night and the Huskies were primed to put on a show.
By means of a fast-paced, well-executed offense and a hounding defensive mindset, they delivered, scoring a 73-46 victory.
“I mean, the energy that we came out with was just noticeable,” Olean head coach Tim Kolasinski said. “Every play it seemed like we had guys flying all over the court. … And I really thought we shared the ball. I thought it made it very difficult. Salamanca is a good team, and they do a lot of great things defensively, but I thought they were discouraged because it was really kind of hard to key on one guy when the ball is moving like that.”
Olean shot out of a cannon, scoring 21 points in the first quarter of play while holding Salamanca to just eight. By halftime, it had scored 40 points, only seven less than it managed throughout the entirety of its first game against Salamanca this season — a 47-44 win.
The Huskies’ offense was just about unstoppable. They were able to make one incisive pass after another to find themselves with open looks under the rim, and when the Warriors did manage to shut that route to points down, they simply kicked it out for an open 3-pointer.
“Our rotations were slow, we weren’t communicating at all defensively, we weren’t in stance, and they cut harder than we were defending,” Salamanca head coach Adam Bennett said. “There was very little resistance on or off the ball and we gave them pretty easy looks.”
Joe Mest led Olean with a game-high 21 points on seven 3-pointers. Fellow starter Mykel Rivera netted the next highest tally on the team with 15 points. But it was not a matter of the starting five doing all the work. Kolasinski’s bench unit more than played its part in the win with Dominik Myers scoring 13 and Connor Hogle picking up 12 points.
“As much energy as the first five provided, those guys give you another shot in the arm when they come off the bench,” Kolasinski said. “Connor has settled in, and he’s been doing some nice things. And Dom, the last few games, he has just been a ball of energy when he gets on the floor. He’s making great plays on the defensive end, and he’s making really good plays on the offensive end. It just brings us that added dimension.”
Payton Bradley was the only player to finish with double-digits in the score column for Salamanca, recording 17 points on the night.
Salamanca’s Payton Bradley (3) finds himself open for a layup against Olean. Bradley scored 17 points for the Warriors in their loss to the Huskies. (Spencer Bates)
Ultimately, the hustle of Olean was too much for Salamanca. Bennett, giving his flowers to his league rival, admitted that it was not a matter of game plan or X’s and O’s, but simply of effort.
“I give credit to them, I thought they came out with a tremendous amount of energy and hustle, and we didn’t, at any point, even match it,” Bennett said. “That’s very frustrating, because that’s what we pride our program on. To me, it’s not really schematic. It’s more (about the) effort and intensity, and they had more than we did tonight.”
Kolasinski was extremely pleased with the amount of effort he saw from his players in their final league game of the season. The result pushed their win streak to four games and now the Huskies have won seven of their last eight games. But what underscored the victory was the composure of his team.
“You can play with a lot of energy, and you can play fast, but then you might not make good decisions sometimes,” Kolasinski said. “I think that experience is what you’re really seeing. They know when we should slow it down a little bit. Tap the brakes. … That’s that experience coming through.”
The end of the regular season is on the very near horizon for both Salamanca and Olean. Following this result, Bennett noted that his intentions are firmly fixed on figuring out how to right the ship and get the best of his team ahead of the postseason.
“I need to see the version of our team that we see in practice every day,” Bennett said. “It’s not at all for a lack of trying hard. They try hard. But we have to get to the bottom of why, in these spurts, we don’t have the energy. We’ve had (energy) and sustained it, really, for the last four or five games, then tonight we don’t. So, it’s my job to fix that, and that’s squarely on my shoulders. We’ll spend all the time in the world to make sure it gets right.”
As for Kolasinski, the eyes of his team are firmly fixed on the future. While the results they have picked up over the greater part of the last month have certainly been positive, the mindset within the team is that nothing matters other than what lies ahead.
Olean’s Joe Mest (24) puts up a 3-pointer against Salamanca. Mest scored a game-high 21 points on seven 3s for the Huskies in their win over the Warriors. (Spencer Bates)
“The mentality that we try to put out there all year long is, every game, we’re going to do the best that we can,” Kolasinski said. “Yeah, we let a couple of league games slip that we thought we had a chance to get, … but that’s the past. We spend a lot of time talking about ‘next.’ That’s all we’ll talk about with these guys, ‘what’s next?’ What do we need to get a little bit better at? What do we need to do to be prepared for these non-league games next week? And ultimately, what do we need to do to feel like we’re prepared to go in the playoffs? … (We want to) play our best at the end of the season, and hopefully that’s what we’re primed to do.”
Salamanca will close out its regular season at home on Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m. against Southwestern.
Olean has two non-league games left on its schedule. The first of which being a road affair on Feb. 17 at 7:30 p.m. against Williamsville East.
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AT OLEAN
Salamanca (46)
Bradley 7 3-4 17, Hill 2 2-2 7, Ghani 3 1-4 7, Taylor 2 0-0 4, Maybee 2 0-0 4, Farmer 1 0-0 3, Farnum 1 0-0 2, Kalyan 1 0-2 2. Totals: 19 6-12 46
Olean (73)
Mest 7 0-0 21, Rivera 5 5-5 15, Myers 6 0-0 13, Hogle 6 0-1 12, Ruggles 1 4-4 6, Teachman 2 0-0 4, Bohdanowycz 1 0-0 2. Totals: 28 9-10 73
Sala. 8 24 33 46
OL 21 40 56 73
Three-point goals: Sala. 2 (Farmer, Hill), OL 7 (Mest 7, Myers); Total fouls: Sala. 9, OL 15; Fouled out: None.
