LeClaire scores 1,000th point but Owen J. Roberts can’t hold off Spring-Ford
BUCKTOWN >> Olivia LeClaire had her moment.
The entire Owen J. Roberts girls’ basketball team was minutes from having theirs.
Unfortunately for the Wildcats, Lucy Olsen and Spring-Ford would only tolerate one.
LeClaire surpassed 1,000 career points early in the fourth quarter and had Owen J. Roberts on track to knock off reigning Pioneer Athletic Conference champion Spring-Ford, but Olsen rallied the Rams from six down in the final 3:19 to pull out a 44-41 victory and maintain their perfect league start Friday night.
Spring-Ford (8-1) trailed 41-35 with 3:26 to play, but Olsen scored seven of her team-high 20 points in the decisive stretch while the Rams held OJR (7-4) scoreless in the closing minutes to extend their Liberty Division win streak to 17 games. Guard Abbey Boyer scored 15 points, including four 3-pointers, while shouldering a larger scoring load in the absence of second-leading scorer Emily Tiffan.
Olivia Leclaire scores her 1000th at the line for 35-32 lead pic.twitter.com/TjP4WeQfUj
— Austin Hertzog (@AustinHertzog) January 4, 2020
LeClaire became just the second player in OJR girls basketball history to reach 1,000 points, joining only 1999 graduate Nikki Kingston, who finished her career with 1,195 points.
LeClaire, who finished with 21 points and 1,005 for her career, hit the mark on a free throw with 7:12 to play in the fourth quarter.
It completed a goal she’d had since middle school when she was struck by the scarcity of names on the OJR girls basketball ‘1,000 Point Club’ banner that hangs in the gym.
“That was me in middle school,” LeClaire said. “All I wanted to do was start my freshman year and get my name up on that banner. And I finally did. I’m extremely happy, it’s relieving, like a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders.”
“She stood here and looked at the banner and said, ‘Coach Mellon, there’s only one name up there,’” said OJR head coach Jeremy Mellon. “She said, ‘I want to be up there. What do I have to do?’ And she’s done those things in the offseasons, gotten to be a better shooter, a better free-throw shooter, she’s a good defender, rebounder. She’s grown up a lot and has shown a lot of maturity. It’s a heck of an accomplishment.”
It was a touch bittersweet: what LeClaire really wanted Friday night was a win over nemesis Spring-Ford,
“I told my mom before the game, ‘I don’t care if I get (my 1,000th point) tonight. I have a lot of games after this. All I want to do is win this game.’ I haven’t won against Spring-Ford my entire career so that’s what I most wanted.”
With a 41-35 lead late it felt very possible … until the star power of junior guard Olsen, last year’s Mercury All-Area Player of the Year, took over.
“I just really wanted to win,” Olsen said of her dominant play in the late stages. “I didn’t want to lose to them. I’m really happy for Olivia getting her 1,000th point, that’s awesome, but I just really wanted to win the game. I knew if we lost it they would think they can beat us. If we beat them once, it’ll help us beat them the next time.
“I love playing good games because it makes us better, I just really wanted to win it.”
Both teams were returning from Florida tournament visits over the holiday period, Spring-Ford before Christmas and OJR after. Both went 2-1 in the Sunshine State.
“Coming back from Florida, I feel like we’re getting more intense,” Boyer said. “We had a lot of good games down there, and coming back I feel like we’re going to keep getting better and improve.”
OJR is hoping for the same after a slower start to the year than it would have hoped.
“We’re starting to find our identity. I think we can beat all the teams in the PAC if we play like we did tonight,” LeClaire said.
Spring-Ford controlled the first half but the Wildcats kept it close, trailing 21-18 at the break. The Rams opened a 28-21 lead with five minutes left in the third quarter, but OJR seized momentum on a 3 by Hannah Clay and LeClaire getting assertive to consistently get to the free-throw line.
LeClaire tied it at 28-28 at the line and OJR got its first lead on a LeClaire putback with 2:15 left in the third quarter.
OJR built leads of six points twice as it rode the wave of LeClaire’s milestone. But an Olsen 3-pointer with 3:19 to play changed the game and Spring-Ford shut down OJR late.
“Spring-Ford is a really good team and you know you can only contain so many parts of them,” Mellon said.
