ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Jaden Hartsfield sat on the bench for the opening moments of the fourth quarter Friday night. The Greece Odyssey junior needed to gather his thoughts.
He had picked up his third foul midway through the third quarter on a drive to basket. It was a part of a sequence where the opposing Eastridge Lancers had a erased a double-digit deficit to take the lead.
The 6-foot-2 guard entered play :30 into the stanza. By the end of the period he earned a 3-arrow from his coach.
“He needed to regroup himself completely, he wasn’t 100 percent focused,” Odyssey head coach Jim Guzielek said after his Leopards downed Eastridge 70-64 in the Monroe County Division IV opener for both squads. “He just needed that to refocus, and he did. He goes in and takes the game over by letting it come to him.”
When it was over, Hartsfield had a pretty good game in one quarter. After producing zero points in the third quarter, Hartsfield scored 17 in the fourth.
With Odyssey trailing by five at 52-47, Hartsfield connected on his first of four fourth-quarter trifecta. He connected on back-to-back 3-balls to cut the deficit to one at 54-53. His pull-up trey with less than three minutes remaining tied the game at 58, and he stepped into one to give Odyssey a lead it did not surrender at 63-62.
“I shot him the 3-arrow because that was the only thing I could think to do,” Guzielek said laughing. “Jaden is a very special player.”
Hartsfield followed with a steal and layup before setting up Aric Williams for two of his four points on the night and a 67-62 lead. He finished with 25 points for the night after scoring a career-high 26 in Odyssey win over Alexander earlier in the week.
Adding to the performance was the fact that Eastridge guard Jalen Rose-Hannah was draped over Hartsfield throughout the fourth quarter.
“I don’t know what else Jalen could have done,” Guzielek said of Hannah, a wide receiver and defensive back on the school’s football team. “I thought Jalen played great defense on him. I thought they tried to do a couple different things once he started going. He was just so locked into finishing the game.”
Travon Harper sealed the game with a traditional 3-point play. Harper finished with 21 points on the night, and he supplied the assist on the go-ahead bucket.
“He makes the right decision and finds Jaden who was lights out,” Guzielek said of the sequence. “It was the correct play.”
Harper drove the paint in transition, but his shot found iron. The Odyssey point guard corralled the rebound in a tangle of Eastridge defenders and fed Hartsfield in the right corner.
“That’s the way the team is playing right now, very unselfishly,” Guzielek noted.
Odyssey (2-0) struggled early, though, committing turnovers on five of its first eight possessions. The Leopards regrouped to take an 11-point lead midway through the second.
That advantage evaporated in the third.
Eastridge’s defense forced six more turnovers and held Odyssey without a basket on six straight possessions.
Terrence Reid scored five of his team-high 23 points in the quarter to pace the Lancers (1-2).
“Playing Eastridge is always going to be a difficult matchup for us in their gym. The game just spreads out. Both teams’ presses are as effective.”
But the reigning Section V Class B champions found their rhythm late.
“Momentum and the crowd caught us a little bit,” Guzielek said. “We just hung tough. That’s what we’ve talked about with this team this year is our mental edge. I think we are going to have a mental edge when it comes to those tough situations. We’ve been in those tough environments. We’ve played in some tough gyms, and I think it’s gonna benefit us. But certainly, it was a challenge tonight.”
Other scorers: Odyssey – Preston Mathis (9), Josh Haff (6), Korey Canton (3), Dylan Kolmetz (2).
Eastridge – Tony Arnold (14), Jamel Demery (10), Jalen Rose-Hannah (5), Adrian Rodgers (5), Taleb Kinlack (3) and Jordan Capers (1).
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