The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Mentor cruises past Lakewood, is 12-0 THE SCORE
After a dominant win against South on Feb. 5, the undefeated Mentor Cardinals continued their winning ways by knocking off Lakewood, 98-51, in a nonconference game.
Mentor moves to 12-0 on the season as the Rangers fall to 4-5.
The game was tied midway through the first quarter at 10-10, but after a Mentor timeout, the defensive tempo changed and the Cardinals never looked back.
Mentor prides itself on defensive intensity, and coach Bob Krizancic said it helps them set up their offense. After a busy week, there was concern for stamina as the game wore on.
“The defense helps create our offense and creates shots for us,” said Krizancic. “We need to have that tempo there if we want our offense to run at its full potential. In four games this week, we scored north of 90 points, there was concern for stamina, but we overcame that concern.”
When a team has as good of a showing as Mentor did in this game, some may think that there isn’t any way that a team could look better. But that is not what Krizancic said to his team at the half. He wanted his players to find more consistency on the offense and keep playing like it was a one possession game.
“Our message at halftime was about consistent shooting and playing every possession,” said Krizancic. “We had a good showing in the third quarter. There was a lot of scoring, the press defense was better than earlier in the game. We just need to learn to play every possession no matter what the scoreboard says.”
The halftime call was answered in a big way by Jonah Waag, who scored 21 of his game-high 29 in the third.
While Waag led the scoring in the second half, teammate Luke Chicone led the team in the first half, scoring 23 of his 27 points in the first two quarters.
Recent games have seen Chicone not scoring at his season average of 21 points per game. But while Chicone’s shots haven’t been falling like usual, teammates including Waag and Steven Key have stepped up in his place.
When asked about the help he has received from his teammates, Chicone praised his teammates and focused on their unselfishness and ability to play as a unit.
“It’s huge having guys like that,” said Chicone. “We are a team that wants to win and we play together. We’re a bunch of unselfish guys and that is going to help us a lot come tournament time.”
On the other end of the court, Lakewood struggled to stop the combo of Waag and Chicone. Coach Alex Cammock says that his team needed to do more on defense.
“We did a poor job on the defensive end,” said Cammock. “It’s a really hard job to guard them. We didn’t do anything out of the usual on defense, those guys are just really good basketball players.”
Leading the way for Lakewood was Riley Ulintz with 19 points. The Rangers will look to rebound when they take on Great Lakes Conference rival Elyria Catholic on Feb. 9, while Mentor will put its undefeated record on the line when they take on Greater Cleveland Conference opponent Euclid on the same date.
MENTOR 98, LAKEWOOD 51