MANSFIELD — It’s sort of misleading to say the Mansfield Senior Tygers stole a boys basketball game they led by double digits for most of the night.
But 17 steals certainly played a big hand ― pun intended ― in the TYs beating Dover 62-55 Friday, Jan. 9, in Pete Henry Gym, handing the Tornadoes their first Ohio Cardinal Conference defeat after a 6-0 start.
The Tygers (8-2 overall, 5-2 in the OCC) won their fourth game in a row for the second time this season, this latest surge coming on the heels of back-to-back league losses by a combined seven points to Lexington and Ashland.
“We was down, we was down, but we had a player meeting, we all talked and we got through it,” said 6-3 junior Davion Mack, who scored 14 points to share team scoring honors with sophomore Kaylen Brooks. “We had to buckle down. If we all said we’re going to hoop, we’ve got to hoop. We’ve got to buckle down and hoop. Let’s do it.”
The big difference in the Tygers getting back on track? Defense, defense and more defense.
It began with a blowout win over archrival Madison in which Senior High held the Rams to a historically-low 15 points. Then came victories over Genoa Christian, Wooster and now Dover, the sixth victim to be held under 60 points.
Even though the second quarter saw four different Tygers make 3-point shots and another score on a conventional 3-point play, it was the defense that kickstarted this pull away. Senior High finished the half with six steals, six blocked shots and, in all, forced eight turnovers while giving the ball away only once.
The Tygers out-scored Dover 10-0 on turnovers in the half and enjoyed runs of 9-0 and 15-0 in building a 33-17 lead at the break.
“That’s Tyger basketball in a nutshell,” coach Marquis Sykes said. “That’s what we want to see. When we’re playing that way we feel like we’ll be in a lot of our games. That’s what we’ve been preaching; that’s what we’ve been teaching.
“I’m a defensive-minded coach, so I’m always going to default to the defensive end of the floor. During this (winning) stretch, we’ve shown a lot of improvement defensively. But, overall, I think it’s just effort. If we show maximum effort on the defensive end, we’ll be fine. We’re getting there.”
The Tornadoes opened up the second half with an 8-2 run, but Senior High responded with 10 unanswered points ― eight of them by Mack.
The Tygers’ lead grew to 19 a couple of times and was 49-32 early in the fourth quarter until Dover (8-4, 6-1) chipped away at its deficit and made it look more respectable at the end.
Mack, the Mid-Buckeye Conference Player of the Year last season for Mansfield Christian, had an excellent all-around floor game. Along with 14 points, he also grabbed a team-high seven rebounds, blocked three shots and had three steals.
Each time out, Mack feels a little more comfortable with his new team.
“Being on a team where everybody can ‘go,’ I wasn’t on that team last year,” he said. “I had to get used to playing with the guys, sharing the ball, getting a feel for it … everybody’s spots, how they play.”
And his teammates have found he’s willing to do whatever is called for.
“I love to work; I love to do everything,” Mack said. “Coach asks me to do something, no questions asked. I’ll do it right now. I love getting the work in.
“Defense is the main thing we work on in practice. We get to it in practice all the time. We’re always competing, getting stops, doing whatever we need to do to get the win.”
While Mack and Kaylen Brooks were the only Tygers to score in double figures, fellow starters DJ Corbin (nine points, two blocks) and D’Vontae Johnson (eight points, four steals) had solid games as did Andrew Brooks Jr. off the bench (seven points, four rebounds, five steals).
With Brooks Jr. coming up with all of those takeaways, Dover finished with 20 turnovers, but the Tornadoes were still able to make it a little interesting at the end behind 6-1 Dieter Weber. One of three sophomores in the starting lineup, he scored eight of his team’s final 15 points and finished with 20 despite being saddled with early foul trouble.
By holding Dover to 30 points through three quarters, Senior High was able to pull within one game of the OCC leaders instead of falling behind three games with half of the league slate completed.
“You never want to use the language ‘must win,’ but we absolutely needed to win this game on our home court against the team in first place in our league. Technically, it was a game we needed to have,” Sykes said.
“I think we took our foot off the gas (in the fourth quarter), but at the end of the day we did enough to win. I see the potential. We just need to put together four quarters of basketball. When we do, I think we can play with anybody.”
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: ‘It’s just effort’ Tygers get defensive to knock off league-leading Dover
Reporting by Jon Spencer, Mansfield News Journal / Mansfield News Journal
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