Usually, with rare exceptions, only state champions end the season with a victory.
For better or worse, the Olean High boys basketball team became an extremely rare exception on Monday. The Huskies will never know if they would have beaten Geneva and earned a return to the New York State Final Four, and perhaps even the championship game. But they’ll always be the Section 6 Class B champions, courtesy of a 36-34 victory over Allegany-Limestone.
Senior Covi James’ three-pointer with 1.6 seconds to go pushed Olean ahead, capping a 10-point comeback in the Buffalo State stunner. No one knew it then, but it would be Olean’s final celebration in a wild playoff run.
“I think it’s going to take some time for everyone to digest the circumstances but you’re absolutely right,” Olean coach Tim Kolasinski said, “if it had to end because of something beyond our control, what a game for it to end on, right?”
Kolasinski, the Huskies’ first-year coach, sent his team a letter on Monday after the news came from NYSPHSAA that it was canceling the postponed winter championships due to the coronavirus pandemic. He highlighted the team’s second-half turnaround, starting the season 6-5 but finishing 13-1, including a nine-game win streak.
“It was amazing, we had those first four playoffs games, I think we won by an average of 28 points a game, which was incredible,” Kolasinski said. “But then really to see us be able to kind of gut one out, obviously baskets came at a premium that last game, and just the whole thing whether you want to look at it defensively, the effort to hold Allegany to two (points) in the fourth quarter and then to hit that big shot with 1.6 (seconds) to go to win it is just unbelievable.”
Olean’s 6-5 start concluded with a 47-43 loss at A-L on Friday, Jan 10. The Huskies won their next four, then lost 62-55 at Fredonia, but finished with nine consecutive victories, including two over the league champion and rival Gators.
“On that 6-5, we had some real ups and downs and obviously the overtime victory over Jamestown was a huge win, and we had a double overtime loss to Bradford,” Kolasinski said. “It was just, it didn’t seem like we could get any level of consistency at that point.
“(After the loss at A-L), the next morning we had practice and before that we had a team meeting, and we really put all our cards on the table and really talked about what it was we saw we could do this season, and what we wanted to do, and what was going to be our course of action. And from that point on these guys … we always talk about the most important thing is to play your best basketball at the end of the year, and so we knew that whether we were 6-5 or we could have been 11-0, we had to get better. That’s always our goal, we had to get better. Sitting there at that point we said, ‘OK, now it’s time to make a move and get going’ and I credit those guys, they really did.”
The Huskies started their only three seniors (Covi James, Dan Klein and Jah’Karee McClain), a junior (Jason Brooks) and a sophomore (Zion James). With only three returning varsity letterwinners, Olean had very little experience coming back from an NYS Final Four team coached by Jeff Anastasia in his final season in 2018-19.
“Those guys didn’t play a ton last year,” Kolasinski said of his returners. “We started out our summer by going to team camp at Robert Morris and, to be honest with you, I think we had a winning record on the weekend, but we got roughed up a little bit. There was no Bona camp last summer, so we went on to (summer league) and we took some lumps, and we were able to get to the championship game, but we lost to a great Randolph team there. So I was really unsure … I just felt like we were really untested coming into the season.
“That first 10, 11 games, even though I’m (saying) we couldn’t find consistency, it seemed like we had potential. For those guys to have things start clicking, and it sounds like oversimplifying, but they were able to do the positive things more often and start to eliminate the negative, the little things that were costing us.”
In his first season taking over for an OHS legend in Anastasia, Kolasinski has consistently said the Huskies’ successes have been about the players.
“To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms,” he said of any personal gratification for leading Olean back to a sectional title. “I think any coach who is being honest will always tell you that you give your best effort as a coach, but you rely so much on your team. That’s really the case with these guys. I would be lying if I didn’t say that personally it felt good to have the success that we had this year. But really I’ve got to give all the credit to these kids. They just kept at it every day and made a commitment to each other.”
Kolasinski’s first season leading the Huskies after 13 years on staff as an assistant and/or JV coach ended with a thrilling win, and then a “What if?”
Given Olean’s excellence to close the regular season and playoffs, it may well have earned a trip to Glens Falls for a second consecutive NYS Final Four appearance. But the Huskies will never know for sure.
“I think there will always be a thought: ‘what if we had played that game, how would that have gone;’ ‘what if we had advanced, how would that have gone,’” Kolasinksi said. “But the one thing that I tried to convey, and the message that I sent out to the team today was: first of all, it’s hard to grasp right now, but with all this being so far beyond our control, in time I think people will eventually accept the fact that there was no other alternative.
“Where I ended the letter (Monday) was that our mentality a lot of the time is something that we just call ‘next play.’ And ‘next play’ means whatever just happened, good or bad, we got to move on to the next thing. And it’s unfortunate, in a lot of ways it’s sad for this group and in particular the seniors, but we all at some level need to try to move on to that next play.”
(Times Herald sports writer and Salamanca Press sports editor Sam Wilson may be contacted at swilson@oleantimesherald.com)
