There’s an old adage in sports that you are only as good as your last game.
With five games left in the regular season, it’s something Coach Steve Mason is still trying to hammer into the consciousness of his Kowboys basketball team.
Osceola, which pulled one of the biggest upsets of the high school basketball season on Wednesday when they beat fourth-ranked Windermere on the road by a 66-57 count, struggled mightily on Friday before pulling out a 48-37 win over Tohopekaliga. It was Osceola’s fifth win in a row and pushed them to 14-4 on the season.
“It been frustrating this season,” Mason said. “You play a great game and beat a top team and you think you are finally putting it together and you come out totally flat two nights later. Certainly, Tohopekaliga deserves a lot of credit, they played really well and took it to us, but we had no fire and intensity coming out of the gate and we need to understand that we’re not good enough to win without that effort and intensity.”
Tohopekaliga (8-7 overall) took control of the game early.
Josh Camejo would score 10 first-half points and Eliei Salva controlled the paint with four points, 12 rebounds, and a block as the Tigers built a nine-point lead in the second quarter before settling for a 21-16 lead at intermission.
It was the lowest-scoring half in the season for Osceola.
“I just looked at them at halftime and said I wasn’t going to call any offensive or defensive plays,” Mason said. “I told them they needed to go out and just play hard and if they did that they would win and they did not we would lose.”
Osceola came storming back in the third period. Chris Rios hit an immediate three on the Kowboys first possession and when Chris Combs hit a three-pointer at the 5:10 mark of third, Osceola grabbed its first lead of the night at 24-23. A 16-4 run in the quarter would extend the Kowboys lead to 32-25.
The Kowboys continued the bringing the pressure in the fourth, building the lead to nine on several occasions. Toho would cut the lead back to five, but a Sean Combs dunk off a steal would push the lead back to nine with two minutes to go to ensure the win.
The Combs brothers combined for 36 of Osceola’s 47 points, with each scoring 18. Camejo led Poinciana 16 points; Salva finished with six points, 16 boards and two blocks. “We had our chances and just lost our aggressiveness in the second half,” Merced said of his team that fell to 5-2 at home and 8-7 overall.
In the Windermere win earlier in the week, Chris Rios broke a 57-57 tie in the final minutes by draining a three-pointer. The Kowboys would out-score Windermere 9-0 down the stretch in pulling one of the biggest upsets in the state this year.
“They were coming off a great game against nationally-ranked Dr. Phillips where they lost 38-37 at the buzzer,” Mason said. “But even though the game was close for most of the contest, you sort of sensed that they didn’t feel there was any chance they were going to lose. When Chris hit that three-pointer everything changed. They started pressing and made some mistakes and we were able to capitalize. It was a great win for our program.”
For the game, Osceola got 15 points from Chris Combs, 12 from Ryan Rivera and 11 from Sean Combs. Sean Stewart scored a game-high 22 for Windermere.
Mason believes that consistency will be the final determination in Osceola’s season. “The difference between good teams and average teams is that good teams will come out and play with intensity and effort regardless of the opponent,” he said. “Right now we are not getting that every night.”
