Photo courtesy of Mark Evans Warren’s Logan Crissey dunks over Conneaut’s Noah Scott during Friday’s Region 5 boys basketball game inside the Joseph A. Massa Gymnasium at Warren Area High School.

The Warren boys basketball team hosted Conneaut on Friday and secured a 62-55 Region 5 victory.

On paper, it was just a routine win for the Dragons, but it was anything but that. The back-and-forth contest featured intense offense and defense, hard-fought battles under the rim, multiple dunks, and even a 1,000-point career milestone.

It was a tale of two halves for the Dragons as they were down early 9-3, and then 19-10 after a pair of Eagle 3-pointers. Down seven heading into the second quarter, Warren’s Colin Zdarko made a quick bucket, followed by a pair of baskets from Logan Crissey. Lucan Thrift would give Warren its first lead of the game since the opening bucket, to go up 20-19. The Eagles would respond with a 10-0 run of their own that included a fadeaway 3-pointer from Conneaut’s Alex Brady to secure his 1,000th career point for the Eagles. Despite it being an away game for the Eagles, Warren head coach Jeff Berdine and athletic director Jon Sitler made sure to stop the game to honor Brady’s accomplishment. Warren headed into the half down 34-23.

Warren exploded in the third quarter, scoring 17 unanswered points from a mix of layups and 3-pointers by Thrift, Crissey and Jacob McMeans. In the big run, the crowd erupted when Logan Crissey took advantage of a breakaway to two-hand dunk the ball into the basket with authority. The Dragons would outscore the Eagles 22-7 in the quarter, to take the lead 45-41.

Warren junior Landon Wood drained a 3-pointer to open up the fourth, followed by a McMeans trey of his own to extend the Dragons’ lead to 10. The Dragons would hold on defensively and make some clutch last-minute free throws for the win. Warren outscored Conneaut 39-21 in the second half.

“We needed a restart after the first half,” Berdine said postgame. “Sometimes when there is no school on a game day, games can get ugly. We had a big start to the third quarter. We always preach that you have to win the first three minutes, and we did exactly that. There was a great sense of team play in the second half in terms of defense. We won the battle of the boards, which we lost in the first.”

“We just had to tighten things up, pick up the sloppiness, and limit the turnovers,” added Thrift. “The whole team contributed to the win tonight. That has been our thing — team wins. We played well tonight, but our turnovers are still hurting us, and we need to make better shots going forward.”

Leading the Warren scoring was Crissey with 23 points. Thrift added 15, McMeans had 9 and Allen Eaton chipped in 6. Brady led the Conneaut scoring with 27 points, with Nick Garcia in double digits with 17.

In junior varsity action, Warren defeated Conneaut 42-31. Bradey Chase led the Dragons with 16 points, followed by Jaxon Thrift with 10.