Julian O’Brien, Spartans, cap ‘rough’ day with golden finish
After a career night when everything he touched turned to gold, Julian O’Brien couldn’t get a thing to work early Saturday afternoon. He turned the ball over the first time he touched it. Missed his first three shots. Saw his team fall behind by a dozen points.
He spent the final minutes of the first half at the end of the Wyomissing bench, collecting himself.
“It was rough,” the senior guard admitted.
At the end of the game, with the Spartans down one, the ball found O’Brien’s hands. He found the golden touch again.
“He’s the clutchest player on our team,” said teammate Amory Thompson after the Spartans pulled out a 42-41 thriller over visiting Oley Valley on a Berks Conference Division III-IV crossover decided by O’Brien’s basket in the final seconds.
“We need a bucket, we’ll go to him,” Thompson said. “Today, he did what he does. The past two games he’s been as clutch as could be. He went to work and hit that great, difficult shot.”
The final sequence didn’t play out the way Ryan Ludwig drew it up during a timeout with 28 seconds left and the Spartans (5-2 Berks III, 8-6) trailing 41-40. He wanted Thompson to take the ball from the top of the key and either kick it out to O’Brien on the wing or take it to the basket himself.
Instead, Drew Eisenhower took a 3-pointer from the left wing, Nevin Carter rebounded the miss and put up a shot. That one got knocked around a couple times before Ben Zechman saved it from going out of bounds and fed it to O’Brien near the foul circle.
O’Brien took a couple steps into the lane before putting up a floater that settled into the net with five seconds left. The Lynx (5-3 Berks IV, 11-4) got off a desperation shot just before the buzzer, but to no avail.
“Julian obviously made a heckuva shot, and the right play,” Ludwig said. “He knew there was time. He’s been practicing the floater, and he knocked it down.”
The Spartans, who have seemingly been running uphill all season, finally have found some level ground. Friday, with O’Brien scoring a career-high 33 points, they knocked off Berks IV leader Antietam.
Now, after seeing Berks III-leading Fleetwood dumped by Tulpehocken Saturday evening, Wyomissing finds itself essentially tied for first place. It has a showdown at Fleetwood Monday. The winner will likely end up as the division champ.
That would be a bit of a miracle considering all the Spartans have gone through this season after a late start due to an extended football playoff run and several interruptions from COVID. They played without Carter, their big, in a 52-25 loss to Fleetwood Jan. 22.
“Our team’s a bunch of fighters,” said Thompson, one of four football players in the starting lineup. “We’ve been through everything they could throw at us this season: Covid shutdown, kids have gotten contact-traced, we’ve been shut down for a week.
“We’ve got to keep battling like we did today and don’t let one mistake, two mistakes, bring you down. We battled throughout the whole game and it paid off.”
The Spartans looked lost at the outset. They turned it over eight times in the first quarter and couldn’t find a way to slow down Oley’s Danny Turchi. The senior wing was the best player on the floor the first 16 minutes, controlling the ball, settling his teammates and putting the ball in the basket.
He thrives in the Lynx’s motion offense and kept getting good looks near the basket, or fouled trying to get there. He had 19 points by halftime — one more than the Spartans.
Oley Valley’s lead grew to 30-18 early in the third quarter after Joey Vaccaro dropped in a 3-ball. O’Brien took over after that. He scored seven straight points over a 90-second stretch, with a three-point play off a sweet spin move, a couple of foul shots and a putback.
After missing nine of his first 10 shots he seemingly couldn’t miss. He jammed 19 of his game-high 24 points into the final 13 minutes of the game less than 24 hours after a 23-point second half at Antietam.
“Julian started feeling it a little more in the second half,” Ludwig said.
O’Brien hit some free throws early in the second half and that, he said, turned his day around.
“Just seeing the ball go in the hoop really helps a lot,” he said.
The Spartans turned the game around with their fullcourt press. They sped up the game, didn’t allow the Lynx to settle into their patterned offense and forced a dozen second-half turnovers. Turchi had just four shots and three points in the second half to finish with 22.
“We stayed together,” Ludwig said. “That’s all we really talked about at halftime was staying together. You win games together. And we won that game together. Turchi had three points in the second half. That is not one person doing that, that’s a collective team coming together and guarding the way we need to guard.”
O’Brien gave the Spartans their first lead since the early minutes when he hit a teardrop with 55 seconds left. The Lynx went right back on top when Turchi beat the press and put in a reverse layup for a 41-40 lead with 46 seconds left.
Ludwig called timeout. In the final huddle O’Brien seemed to be lost in his own thoughts.
“I was just thinking: ‘We can’t lose this game; we can’t afford it,’ ” he said. “If we would’ve lost that, I don’t know that we have a chance for Berks III. We just needed that win.”
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Final | |
| Oley Valley | 15 | 12 | 7 | 7 | 41 |
| Wyomissing | 8 | 10 | 11 | 13 | 42 |
| Lynx (5-3, 11-4) | FG | FT | 3’s | A | R | Points |
| Yerger | 0-2 | 0-0 | 0-1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kelly | 2-8 | 0-0 | 2-7 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Dn Turchi | 7-15 | 7-9 | 1-3 | 2 | 6 | 22 |
| Vaccaro | 1-8 | 0-0 | 1-5 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| Reifsnyder | 2-4 | 2-4 | 2-3 | 0 | 5 | 8 |
| Neal | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Dv Turchi | 1-4 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 3 | 2 |
| Totals | 13-42 | 9-13 | 6-20 | 6 | 22/25 | 41 |
| Spartans (5-2, 8-6) | FG | FT | 3’s | A | R | Points |
| O’Brien | 8-20 | 7-7 | 1-5 | 0 | 7 | 24 |
| Zechman | 1-3 | 0-0 | 0-1 | 1 | 6 | 2 |
| Thompson | 3-5 | 2-2 | 0-1 | 2 | 2 | 8 |
| Carter | 1-5 | 0-0 | 1-1 | 1 | 12 | 3 |
| Eisenhower | 2-11 | 0-0 | 1-6 | 1 | 6 | 5 |
| Hyde | 0-2 | 0-0 | 0-1 | 2 | 4 | 0 |
| Schippers | 0-5 | 0-0 | 0-2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Totals | 15-51 | 9-9 | 3-17 | 7 | 37/39 | 42 |
Turnovers: Oley Valley 15, Wyomissing 17.
These photos and others from the game can by purchased from PhilMarphoto.
