DAVISON STARTS FAST, TOPS MT. PLEASANT IN SVL ACTION
Mt. Pleasant has 3-game winning streak snapped
Down the stretch they come. That is, the Oilers are headed toward the final, and most challenging, stretch of their season.
Mt. Pleasant’s boys basketball team entered the daunting final phase of its 2023-2024 regular season at home Friday with a Saginaw Valley League showdown against a very talented Davison squad.
Over the course of the next month-plus the Oilers will face league-leading Saginaw (9-4), Saginaw Heritage (7-2), Saginaw Arthur Hill (10-3) and defending league champion Grand Blanc (45) in key contests that will go a long way to deciding this season’s conference champion.
The schedule itself is daunting, for sure, as Saginaw and Saginaw Heritage and Saginaw Arthur Hill are all either ranked in the state rankings or receiving votes.
In Friday’s contest the visitors from Davison (8-3 overall, 3-1 SVL) took it to the Oilers (9-6, 3-2) as the Cardinals hit at a blistering 62 percent from the floor on 29-of-47 shooting en route to a 78-63 victory. Moreover, in the first half alone, they hit at a 65 percent clip on 18-of-28 shooting all while forcing 12 Mt. Pleasant turnovers via their defensive fullcourt press.
“Give credit to them, that’s a really good basketball team that’s really well coached,” said Oiler head coach Dan Schell, whose Oilers had their three-game winning streak snapped via the defeat. “We’ve had the tendency to start out slow for whatever reason and somehow we have to figure that out because it doesn’t get any easier. You can’t get down 8-0 and expect to come back, it’s an uphill battle from there.”
Mt. Pleasant turned it over on its first three offensive possessions of the night and Davison cashed each in, racing out to an 8-0 lead in a matter of 70 seconds. Davison’s ability to get up and down the floor led to numerous easy buckets as it hit nine of its first 11 shots to claim a 25-13 lead at the end of one quarter.
After falling behind by double-digits in a matter of minutes the hosts did show some grit though as they clawed back and cut the deficit to single-digits numerous times via runs of their own. In short the Oilers never waned and never let the game get completely away from them as they kept storming back to at
least make it interesting.
“We’re getting better at competing, that’s one thing I will give this team credit for,” Schell added. “The reality is (Davison)
might be the best team in the Valley and we showed we can compete with them, we can. When we put things together we give ourselves an opportunity. We need
to do that for 30 minutes, not 22 minutes. When you take 10 minutes off you lose and that’s what happened (Friday night).”
Mt. Pleasant outscored Davison 20-19 in the second quarter and went into the half down 11 at 44-33. The Cardinals pushed their lead back up to 17 at the end of three quarters before the hosts got within nine at 67-58 with 4:01 left in regulation. Davison iced it with an 11-5 run to close it out though.
Going forward the Oilers face one of the more difficult schedules in the state as they’re next two games are on the road at Saginaw (Feb. 2) and at Saginaw Heritage (Feb. 6).
“We’ll keep working and we’ll get better and try to sneak one out next Friday,” said Schell.
Easton Day led the Oilers with 18 points while Logan Borodychuk had 12.
Davison was paced by Amari’yunn Blythe who had 18 points.