Staff photo / Brian Yauger Fitch junior Marcel Finkley puts up a shot during the Falcons’ home finale on Friday. Finkley led Fitch with a game-high 18 points in the loss.

AUSTINTOWN — Warren G. Harding Harding capped off a season sweep on Friday, dispatching rival Fitch in a 51-41 victory.

“It always feels good to get two wins against a quality program, especially in the conference,” Harding coach Keelyn Franklin said. “They’re looked at as one of the better teams in the area and they are, so any time you can get a season sweep of a team, especially a team like that, you’re happy.”

It was a tough night for shots, as neither team could find its rhythm offensively.

To compensate, Harding made sure to lock in on the other end of the court, hunkering down defensively and forcing bad shots.

“We understand that in any brand of basketball, you’re going to have nights where you don’t make shots, so defense isn’t a choice,” Franklin said. “You have to guard no matter what, because you can win some games when you’re not making shots if you defend, but if you don’t defend consistently, you’re only going to win when you make shots.

“We kind of try to drill that into our guys. Every day we do defensive drills, we start practice with defensive drills, and so they’ve accepted that role, and I think we’re coming along with that.”

Despite lacking Chaz Coleman for much of the fourth quarter due to foul trouble, the Raiders (12-8, 6-2) not only regained the lead, but held onto it.

Once Coleman entered the game again, it was just a matter of holding onto the lead. Even though the junior was targeted, Coleman remained in the game, avoiding his fifth and final foul.

“I think once he got in and he saw there wasn’t much time left, he was kind of able to play a little bit more freely,” Franklin said. “They attacked him. I thought he was going to get his fifth foul at one point, but he kind of pulled away from it. That’s big for him as a junior, as a premier player in the area and as one of our best players. He’s going to have to learn how to play in those situations because we need him on the floor here. It just is what it is, so just to see that maturity of him and being able to play with four fouls was good.”

Chaz and Ny Coleman each finished the game with 10 points. Freshman guard Gummy Hart led the Raiders with 12.

Fitch’s Marcel Finkley led on the scoresheet for the Falcons with a game-high 18 points. Allen Hill had a 14-point outing.

At 11-9 and 4-4 in the league, Fitch ends its regular season with a pair of road games against Medina Highland and Uniontown Lake.

Wanting to close the year off on a high note, Fitch wants to combine the intensity they had Friday with some better finishing.

“We need to bring the same intensity that we got tonight,” Falcons coach Brian Beany said. “We have two away games, so those are always tougher. We’ve got to find that energy back this week and work on things that we need to get better at. We always want to be playing our best basketball tournament time, so there’s some things we have to fix, free throws being of them. We struggled the last five games at the line, a real challenge. I don’t know why to be honest. We’re a decent free throw shooting team, we just have to get back and keep working on that.”

The Raiders close the regular season against Farrell. Like how Fitch has intensity at the top of its list, Harding has toughness.

“I feel like I’ve been saying this, but we’ve got to continue to get tougher. We have to handle pressure better and we have to execute better,” Franklin said. “We play a tough, tough Farrell team on Tuesday, and they’re going to get up in us, press us, it’s the game of the week. There’ll be another intense atmosphere, which is what you want at this time. We’ve got to get tougher, we’ve got to execute better, and just be a little more cohesive offensively.”

byauger@tribtoday.com