Monday, February 27, 2023
By Scott Hennen
shennen@cbussports.com

Tamara Ortiz was all smiles, wearing one of the game nets around her neck after the Westerville South girls basketball team won its third Division I district championship in six seasons.

The fifth-seeded Wildcats downed third-seeded Olentangy Liberty 50-40 on Feb. 25 in a Division I district final at Ohio Dominican. The senior guard was the keeper of the prized memento from their first district title since 2019.

“Every net we cut down, one of the seniors gets to take (the net) home, and I get to take this one,” Ortiz said. “And hopefully there will be more to come.”

The Wildcats will battle eighth-ranked Marysville at 6 p.m. Feb. 28 at Westerville North in a battle of 24-2 teams. Seventh-ranked Pickerington Central meets Dublin Coffman at 8:30 p.m. in the second semifinal. The championship is at 7 p.m. March 3 at the same venue. 

The Wildcats were playing without freshman phenom Arianna “Peanut” Cradle, who averaged 15.4 points per game. The 5-foot-8 point guard suffered a left knee injury in the Wildcats’ 61-41 victory over 14th-seeded Teays Valley on Feb. 22 in a district semifinal.

The point-guard duties switched to Ortiz and sophomore Zoe Guice with sophomore Deziah Dupree stepping into the fifth starting role. Ortiz led a balanced attack with 15 points, Dupree and Guice both added 12 points apiece.

“I play at point guard a lot, and I will be a point guard in college at Central Michigan,” said Ortiz, who averages 17.7 points per game. “I can play the 1 (point guard) and I can play the 2 (shooting guard), and I really needed to play the 1. They were pressuring (sophomore) Zoe (Guice) so I had to step in and take over for a little while.”

Coach Jermaine Guice knew it wouldn’t be easy to lose a key performer for a district championship, but his team had experience at being shorthanded. South reached a district final last season, losing to Coffman 47-42.

“We had some injuries during the season and we had some games that Peanut didn’t play with us,” he said. “We had played without her before and that really helped us in the long run.

“Then the seniors kind of got together and said that this is virtually the same team as last year and didn’t get it done. They came out and competed and had some things that they wanted to prove. They came out and got it done.”

Coach Guice’s senior daughter, Nelia, scored nine points against the sixth-ranked Patriots. The guard echoed her father’s statement.

“As soon as we heard the news (about Cradle), we were devastated,” the Ohio Dominican recruit said. “Losing her was a big humongous hit, but we all gathered around her and said the rest of the season is for Peanut. We’re playing for her.

“When (sister Zoe Guice and Ortiz) come to play and they pass the ball and make the plays, we’re an unstoppable team. They are two of the best guards in the area and as long as we have them we’ll be totally fine.”

The Wildcats’ suffocating defense was a key, forcing Liberty into 17 turnovers. The same defense helped the squad notch an 83-16 win over 42nd-seeded Delaware on Feb. 15 in its postseason opener and a 60-14 win over 39th-seeded Thomas Worthington 60-14 on Feb. 18 in the second round.

“We really take pride in our defense, and that was the key coming into this game,” Nelia Guice said. “We knew (the Patriots) might go on runs, but we can stop them on defense. If we get it done on the defensive end, we’ll get it done on the offensive end.”

Coach Guice said the defensive pressure is omnipresent with his players.

“Our defense can be stifling when we sit down and guard,” he said. “We took care of business today. I give all the credit where credit is due. Our girls stepped up, they wanted it and they won the game.”

The Wildcats have won three district titles with the others coming back-to-back in 2018 and 2019. They reached a district final in 2020, losing to Reynoldsburg 61-57 in overtime. They sat out the 2021 postseason because of positive COVID-19 testing before the loss to Coffman last year.

“A year of experience and a year of being hungry was the difference this time,” coach Guice said. “You don’t like the feeling that you experienced last year of losing at this point (of the season). You never like to lose at this point, but somebody does. We just came to compete.”

Ortiz said maturity will be the key ingredient if the Wildcats are to reach the state’s final eight teams as well as earning the program’s first state-semifinal berth.

“Last year we were juniors and we didn’t want it as bad as last year,” she said. “We walked in as a team and said, ‘We know what we want. We know what we’re going for.’ We really want those rings so we’re going to do whatever it takes to move on and not go home.”