CANTON, Ohio -- A berth in the regional championship game was at stake, and the youthful Lutheran East boys basketball team went to the old guy, 6-6 junior forward Nehemiah Benson.
Benson led the Falcons on a late 14-3 scoring run, and finished with 20 points as Lutheran East defeated Orrville, 63-50, in the second game of Wednesday night's Division III regional semifinal doubleheader at the Canton Fieldhouse.
Lutheran East (18-8) will play Mogadore (20-6) on Saturday night at the Fieldhouse, with the regional title and a trip to the Final Four in Columbus on the line. Junior guard Lukas Swartz scored 31 points and his senior backcourt mate, Kyle Coffman, scored 22 as Mogadore rallied to a 69-65 victory over Ashtabula Edgewood (24-2) in the first game.
Lutheran East followed its 2017 state championship season with a state semifinal loss last year, when Benson emerged as one of the team's premier players.
"Nehemiah has been phenomenal for us lately," Falcons coach Sam Liggins said. "We had the injury bug all season, and he's been carrying us.
"He's a junior and has been through this before. His work ethic is through the roof. I'm so proud of him."
Benson got major help from another Falcons junior, as 5-8 guard T.J. Blevins tallied 15 points. Freshman Marquis Lewis, 6-4, scored 10 points, and four sophomores totaled 22 of the team's other 24 points.
Senior guards Cayden McDaniel and Ben Summers scored 17 and 14 points, respectively, for Orrville (16-9), which trailed just 49-45 with six minutes left. Benson then began the decisive 14-3 run with a spinning bank shot, then used a nifty inside move to draw a foul and make two free throws. He added three more points during the surge.
In the opener, Mogadore trailed by 12 points three times in the first half. Swartz, though, scored 11 second-quarter points -- nine on his high-arcing 3-point shots -- and Coffman netted eight as Mogadore cut Edgewood's lead to 30-27 at halftime.
Swartz and Coffman both canned a pair of 3-pointers in the first four minutes of the third quarter, pacing Mogadore to a 41-35 lead. From that point, though, Edgewood senior point guard Aaron Anderson scored 21 of his 29 points. The Wildcats could not stop Anderson's penetration into the paint, as he often finished with a basket at the rim, or with a nifty feed to a teammate for an easy hoop.
An Anderson layup tied the game, 53-53, with six minutes to go. Mogadore's David Wolverton then hit a 3-pointer and Eli Robertson drove the lane for a layup and a 58-53 Wildcats' lead.
Mogadore led the rest of the way, though an Anderson layup pulled the Warriors to within 66-65 with 26 seconds left. Swartz swished two free throws two seconds later, to up the Wildcats' lead to three points, and Coffman's foul shot with 6.8 seconds left clinched the win.
"I feel like when I make one, I'm able to catch fire," said Lukas Swartz, who is averaging 21 points a game. "That's how I felt tonight. I just felt it was going to go through the rim. (And with Coffman), it helps us a lot, because teams can't just focus on one guy."
Mogadore will play in a regional championship game for the first time since 1983, when it was led by Rod Swartz, Russ's brother and now a Wildcats assistant coach.
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