In same spot, Norwalk finished off rally for Lake title

The moment wasn't lost on those who were involved. "This is a complete 180 from last year," Norwalk senior boys basketball player Will Gehlhausen said. "And it feels great." In the 2019-20 regular season finale at Tiffin Columbian, the Truckers needed a win on the road to earn a share of the SBC Lake Division championship. They trailed by three points with 7.7 seconds left, when Garrett Chapin rebounded a missed shot and threw up a fadeaway 3-pointer that banked in at the buzzer to force overtime. But Norwalk ultimately lost that game, 65-62, in double-overtime, and failed to earn a share of a league title. Fast forward to this past Saturday (Feb. 13) at Perkins. The Truckers were again playing for a league title share, and again had the ball down by a basket (45-43) with 7.1 seconds left. Norwalk again missed the first shot, but junior Ian Minor got his own rebound, and launched his own fadeaway shot that also was good at the buzzer to force overtime. And this time, the Truckers finished. "We all talked about it on the bench when Ian made that, 'let's finish it,'" Gehlhausen said. "It was on our minds not to have a repeat of last year. It was our time." Chapin, Minor and Gehlhausen all hit big shots in overtime, but none bigger than Gehlhausen's fifth and final 3-pointer with 1:10 left from nearly two feet behind the line to give the Truckers the final basket of the game in the 56-53 win. "Will's shooting was huge for us all night," Chapin said. "It kept us in it." Now, Norwalk (13-7, 10-1) hosts Tiffin Columbian (17-4, 9-2) on Friday with a chance to win the SBC Lake title outright. Also similar to a year ago, it took a stunning turnaround for the Truckers to be in a position that once seemed unthinkable. Last season, they had lost at home by 26 points vs. Sandusky, only to reel off eight straight league wins that included giving the Blue Streaks their lone loss of the regular season. This season started by getting overwhelmed by Division I Ashland (16-4) by 31 points (82-51) in the season opener. Not quite two weeks later, the Truckers allowed 71 points in a 12-point loss at Fremont Ross (7-10). Sitting at 2-2 after four games, the Truckers battled, but came up a couple possessions short in a 64-58 loss at Western Reserve (17-2). But then things bottomed out with a 55-36 loss at Huron and a 72-55 loss at Willard that didn't feel as close as the score indicated. Suddenly, the Truckers were just 2-5 through seven games. A visibly upset head coach Steve Gray after the Willard loss noted his team had been allowing point totals not seen in quite some time during his tenure. He wasn't wrong. The season-opening loss to Ashland was the worst margin of defeat in three years. The 82 points were the most allowed in five years. After seven games, Norwalk was allowing 61.8 points per game. "That was the lowest of lows," Gray said. "Things just didn't feel right at that time." Thoughts of contending for a league championship seemed like a pipe dream. At that point, the Truckers simply needed a win. Senior Andrew Mozina said on Saturday that really was the mindset for the Truckers. "We were embarrassed after the loss at Willard," he said. "We were trying to avoid a losing season at that point. We didn't want to go out with a losing record, and the next thing you know, we strung a winning streak together the other way — and now we're here and clinched it a week early this time." The Truckers responded by playing much better defense, holding every opponent during a six-game win streak to less than 50 points in each victory. In winning 11 of 13 games, Norwalk lost only on a 3-pointer at the buzzer (58-57) at Tiffin Columbian on Jan. 22, and to the top seed in its Div. II district, Shelby (16-2), by a 59-42 score on Jan. 30. After allowing nearly 62 points per game during the 2-5 start, the Truckers took that number down to just 46.2 points allowed per game over the next 13 games. "It feels great that we all still came together as a team and had the mental toughness to finish," Mozina said. "I wasn't sure this was possible. But things started to click, we became closer, and kept working hard." As Gray sat and watched his players briefly meet with family after a quick photo at Perkins, he admitted that often he wants success too bad for the kids. "League championships are important," he said. "And I just felt like we let one slip away last year. We just showed grit." His expected-to-be two-time All-Ohioan and four-year starter agrees on the Truckers showing resolve. "I think the best thing to say is we dug deep," Chapin said. "We knew that we are a championship team and that we had not been playing like one. The last-second losses to Tiffin and Upper Sandusky (district title game) have been in the back of our minds. "We just wanted to try and outwork our opponents and show we're the championship team that we are. Once we were able to do that, we had the success that we believed we were capable of." Gray offered a unique analogy of coaches in general wanting success almost too much for their own players. "This is what's so stupid about coaching," he said. "It's going to be a great weekend in the Gray house — because we won by two points. If that shot by Ian Minor doesn't go in, we're miserable and the weekend is ruined. "And it makes no sense for adults to act that way, especially coaches," Gray added. "But coaches are passionate. You put so much time into it with these kids, and you just want it so badly for them." Gray was also asked about the string of success for the Norwalk program over the last decade-plus. The Truckers went 49 years between league championships, finishing in second place just five times in almost 50 years from 1962-2011. But then Norwalk rattled off four consecutive Northern Ohio League titles, though much of that success often gets attributed to the star power of Jeff Thomas, Ben Haraway and Jake Fetherolf — to name a few. Now, an entire new era of kids finished one basket away from a three-peat in the SBC Lake, giving the program six league titles in an 11-year stretch. "It would have been nicer to have seven, but early in my career (at Lexington), a label on my coaching staffs was that we could make an average team better, but couldn't take a great group to the next level," Gray said. "Then I came here in 2002, same thing. We could take average and make them better. Up until Ben and Jeff's senior year (2013-14), it was still something that we were labeled with. "And then we did it obviously with the state title," he added. "But it really was about the kids then and it still is now. It's satisfying for a lot of different reasons, but tonight is special — really, really special. I just want to give credit to the kids and my tremendous assistant coaches."