East Liverpool's Mason Ludwig makes a play against Oak Glen on Saturday. (Photo by Jimmy Joe Savage)

EAST LIVERPOOL — East Liverpool’s boys’ basketball team honored the memory of one of its favorite sons by rolling to a 72-33 win over Ohio River rival Oak Glen before a large crowd in Potter Fieldhouse Saturday night.

Before the game, the East Liverpool community honored the memory of long-time youth basketball director and varsity scorekeeper Steve Dawson, who passed away on Dec. 20. Dawson mentored hundreds of young East Liverpool players during his many years as youth director. Before the game, East Liverpool students, sporting special Steve Dawson dark blue t-shirts, lined up around the court. Also, East Liverpool team members, cheerleaders and coaches donned the t-shirts.

“Steve did a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff,” praised East Liverpool head coach Nate Conley. “He ran our youth program and did it for years and you saw how many kids he’s impacted (out on the court in pregame). You get emotional thinking about the impact he’s had on every single kid that’s played here the last 10 years.”

On the court, the Potters dominated the boards 21-9 in the first half and 35-18 for the game against the youthful Golden Bears and jumped out to a 22-8 lead after one period. They never looked back.

“East Liverpool is loaded,” praised Oak Glen head coach Jerry Everly. He (coach Nate Conley) has a good thing going here.”

With the win, the Potters improved to 9-1 on the season.

“It was a good win,” said Conley. “I liked us holding them to two points in the fourth quarter. We pride ourselves on our conditioning and it shows throughout the length of the game.”

With the setback, Oak Glen fell to 1-9.

“We’re playing three freshmen a lot of minutes,” said Everly of his extremely youthful team. “It’s growing pains and we’re trying to play as hard as we can.”

Leading the Potters’ attack was 6-4 junior Preston Dawson, who took game-scoring honors with 16 points. In addition, Dawson pulled down a game-high 14 rebounds.

“The whole team had a lot of motivation going into the game,” said Preston Dawson. “We were just talking about Steve Dawson, who had a huge impact on all of us. He coached everything and was more involved with the kids (of East Liverpool) than anyone I know.”

The Potters displayed good offensive balance, as following Dawson in the scoring column were guard Marquise Glenn and Quintin Conrad with 14 points each, while Mason Ludwig and Cohen Pease added nine and eight points, respectively.

“Early on we were hitting the high-low and Mason (Ludwig) and Preston (Dawson) had a little chemistry going (dominating the boards and scoring),” said Conley. “I didn’t think we played very well in the first half, I thought we were flat, but we picked it up defensively in the second half. I thought our sophomores played tremendously. I thought Quintin Conrad came in and played tremendous defense and hit some shots and Cohen (Pease) is always dangerous and hit some shots.

Pacing Oak Glen was Jered Hissam with 11 points and Brady Chaney with six markers.

With Glenn scoring eight first-half points and teammate Dawson adding seven markers in the opening half to go along with five rebounds, the Potters took as much as an 18-point lead following a short hoop by Ludwig, making it 30-12 with 4:10 showing before intermission. Oak Glen, led by Hissam’s five first-half markers, trailed by 17 points (36-19) at halftime.

The Potters got their offense in high gear in the second half, holding a 55-31 lead after three quarters. They took their largest advantage of the night at 37 points (68-31) which started a running clock with 3:33 left. They went on to close out the 72-33 triumph.

“We respect every opponent, we didn’t want to have any letdowns and I thought we did that,” stated Conley.

“We’ve got a good program going,” added Preston Dawson. “We keep learning and we’re hoping to pass the torch on to the kids below us.”

Oak Glen’s Everly can see his team making strides.

“You have to hang in there through the growing pains — the good and the bad,” he said. “We’re getting better and we can see it every day.”

NOTES

¯ East Liverpool rolled to a 53-32 win in the junior varsity game. Owen Fredritz led the Potters with 13 points.

¯East Liverpool will host arch-rival Beaver Local Tuesday evening.

“The next four are at home,” said Conley. “The most impressive thing about our record is that we’ve played seven road games, so now we get back into the field house. It was a great crowd tonight.”

¯ The Golden Bears will entertain Steubenville Catholic Central Friday night.

“They (the Crusaders) beat us pretty good the last time out, so we’d like to compete against them hard and play better,” closed Everly.

OAK GLEN: 8-11-11-2–33

EAST LIVERPOOL: 22-13-20-17–72

EAST LIVERPOOL SCORING: Cohen Pease 3-0-8, Nate Birch 1-0-2, Quintin Conrad 6-0-14, Malachi Reed 3-0-6, Marquise Glenn 5-2-14, Preston Dawson 7-2-16, Mason Ludwig 4-1-9, J. Jones 0-0-0, Blake Adkins 0-0-0, Gavin Wright 0-0-0, D’Shawn Kirby 1-1-3, Jake Smith 0-0-0. TEAM TOTALS: 30, 6-8: 72

OAK GLEN SCORING: Brady Chaney 3-0-6, Preston Cole 1-2-4, Rajhan Ramgeet 2-0-4, Jered Hissam 4 1-11, Tristan McCauley 0-0-0, Xavier Howard 0-0-0, Gavin Geisse 2-0-4, Nick Ferguson 0-0-0, Tyler Evans 1-0-2, Jaylen Coward 0-0-0, Alex Dennis 1-0-2. TEAM TOTALS: 14, 3-6: 33

Three-point goals: Oak Glen 2 (Jered Hissam 2). East Liverpool 6 (Cohen Pease 2, Quintin Conrad 2, Marquise Glenn 2)

Total fouls: Oak Glen 9, East Liverpool 7.

Fouled out: none