OLD LYME — The Old Lyme boys avenged their overtime loss to Cromwell in last year’s Shoreline Conference final by soundly defeating Cromwell 54-34 Tuesday night to advance to Thursday’s Shoreline Championship final against Morgan. Tonight’s game tips off at 7:30 p.m. at Polson Middle School in Madison. The game against Cromwell was played in the Lyme-Old Lyme High School (LOLHS) gym.
After trailing by one point at the half, Old Lyme outscored Cromwell 29 to 8 in the second half.
Aiden Using led the Wildcat scoring with 27 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks. Ty Dean contributed nine points to the victory and Jared Ritchie eight.
Coach Kirk Kaczor told LymeLine, “The difference in the second half was our defense. Brady Sheffield and Ray Doll sat [on the bench] most of the second quarter with foul trouble. When they came back in, that gave us a big lift.”
Kaczor continued enthusuastically, “We’re excited to go back to the finals.”
In the first round of the CIAC Class S Girl’s tournament, in a game played immediately prior to the boy’s game, eighth-seeded Old Lyme defeated Gilbert (seeded 25th) 46-32 to advance to a second round game against Aerospace to be played on Friday at 6:30 p.m. in the LOLHS gym.
Highlights from the game were Junior Sam Gray scoring 20 points, taking 10 rebounds and three steals, and making two blocks while Junior Emily DeRoehn scored seven points, took eight rebounds and five steals, and made two blocks. Senior Taylor Thompson added seven points with eight rebounds and one block.
Coach Don Bugbee commented after the game to LymeLine, “It was a solid team performance, especially defensively, and this was the difference in this game.” He added, “Tournament time is the time for minimal mistakes and you need contributions from everyone to advance from each round of games. Each possession is valuable and all of the little things you can do to contribute add up and put you in the best position to win a game.”
As always, we wish both teams the best of luck in their upcoming games and say with vigor, “Go Wildcats!”