Louisville fan here, first off I want to start by saying hats off to Glen Oak and Coach Hairiston. They are a phenomenal basketball team and deserved to win the game, I felt like in general they were better prepared and wanted it more. A lot of my fellow Leopards are blaming the officials which I think is wrong, they were calling the game both ways and I've been watching playoff basketball for a long time, sure more fouls should have been called but they weren't, adjust to the way the game is being called and move on. This falls on Louisvilles coaches inability to adjust during the game. Our teams the last two seasons have been too good to preform as poorly as they have when it matters most. Talent wise you can't tell me this team can't hang with the top tier teams in the state, we have a McKinley graduate in town (no names, please) who said in his opinion he thought this was the most talented starting five he's seen in Stark County since the 05-06 McKinley teams. No disrespect to the Jackson state title teams but I agree. Coach S has really done a fantastic job of building this program up and done great with youth development but in game he does way too much behaving like a fan instead of a coach. He should have been coaching up his players to increase their physicality and want too especially when it came to rebounding the basketball.
I am not looking forward to next year, if the rumors are true I want this team to opt into playing Division 1, but everyone here seems so sold on taking the "easy" road and going into Division 3 where we likely will have an easy path to the State Championship. I get it, I do, but with the core group we have returning I just don't know what kind of message you send by not taking a path you could succeed in in exchange for what I believe and others who have more knowledge then me say will likely be a cake walk. Ultimately, I am proud of the young men on this team for being what I consider to be the best team in program history and next year they should be even better, but it's just very sad they don't even have a district title to show for it when I believe they could have competed in Dayton.