Tre Dinkins (above) had 19 points as O’Hara won its second consecutive road game to open PCL play. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)
By Josh Verlin
Every big shot Archbishop Ryan made on Sunday afternoon, Cardinal O’Hara had a response.
No bigger example of that than the end of the third quarter, when Ryan sophomore Luke Boyd made a running 3-pointer at the buzzer, cutting the O’Hara lead five eight to five, sending the Ryan crowd into a tizzy, anticipating the comeback. It didn’t happen. Instead, O’Hara started the fourth calm as ever, senior guard Tre Dinkins knocking down a 3-pointer to push the lead to eight.
That was how it went the rest of the fourth: every Raider punch was beat with a Lion counter, every sense of momentum built by the home team stolen back by the visitors. O’Hara got buckets when it needed to, hit foul shots when it needed to, and stayed unbeaten thanks to a 76-68 win, continuing one of the early surprise stories of the 2019-20 season.
“Last year, I think we would have folded…now I think we’re prepared for it, especially on the road, when the crowd was getting wild (after) hat bank shot to end the [third] quarter,” head coach Ryan Nemetz said. “A team could lose it and argue in the huddle, [but] our guys stuck together and continued to work and it was awesome. I was really proud of our guys.”