Harding rolls past Mentor

The Raiders jumped out to a 20-point lead at halftime.

By PETE MOLLICA

VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF

CLEVELAND — When the Warren Harding and Mentor High basketball teams met in the regular season final last month, the Cardinals were without two of their starters.

Harding won 55-34.

Wednesday night in the semifinal round of the Division I boys regional tournament at Cleveland State University, Mentor had all its starters.

Harding won, this time 88-61.

The Raiders (22-1) dominated the Cardinals from start to finish and moved into Saturday’s regional championship game against Lakewood St. Edwards, which defeated Elyria, 70-65. Tip-off is set for 7:30 p.m.

“We hammered at them all week long that we had to come out and suffocate Mentor defensively right from the start, we definitely couldn’t afford to give them any open looks at the basket,” Harding coach Steve Arnold said.

“We needed a quick start and we need to play good defense and we got both tonight,” Arnold said.

It was a total domination by the Raiders under the basket as they scored 64 of their 88 points inside the paint and outrebounded the Cardinals (20-5) 42-18.

Senior Chris Henderson led the way for the Raiders with a 30 point effort, while Sheldon Brogdon added 18 and Damian Ergle had 12 points and 11 rebounds.

“Chris [Henderson] is very capable of dominating a game like he did tonight,” Arnold said. “Overall, I thought our performance was pretty impressive. I don’t know if we’ve played any better defense than we did in the second quarter tonight.”

Mentor coached by former Girard High coach Bob Krizanic, never got untracked, mainly because of the pressure defense applied by the Raiders.

Krizancic’s son, Cole, led the Cardinals with 15 points, all of them coming on 3-point shots as the Cardinals hit on 11 of 35 on the night, but scored just 19 baskets, compared to the Raiders’ 34.

Harding shot 68 percent from the field, but most of them were layups and dunks while the Cardinals hit on just 35.2 percent for the game.

After Harding jumped on top 34-14 at halftime, there was very little letup in the second half.

They increased the lead to 26 points 47-21 midway through the third quarter and pulled to their biggest lead of 28 points with 3:04 left in the game 78-50 before both coaches started substituting freely.

Arnold says that he knew the Raiders would be playing St. Edward’s for the title and the right to go to Columbus and the state tournament.

“I said before we got here that the road to Columbus is going to go through St. Edward’s,” Arnold said. “Coach [Eric] Flannery and his staff do an outstanding job and it should be an outstanding matchup.”

The Raider started out quickly jumping out to a 9-0 lead in the first three minutes scoring inside and dominating the boards.

The Cardinals made a comeback when they went on a 7-2 run to pull to within four points 11-8 and then closed to 13-11 on a 3-point shot by Matt Freeman with 2:10 left in the opening quarter.

But Harding scored the final four points and took a 17-11 lead.

The Raiders sticky man-to-man defense really took its toll on the Cardinals in the second quarter as they held Mentor to without a field goal for nearly the entire quarter before Mentor scored with 12 seconds remaining.

Harding took full advantage and reeled off 17 points in the quarter and took a 34-14 lead at intermission.

The Raiders dominated inside the entire half, scoring 30 of their 34 points in the paint, while they also outrebounded the Cardinals, 23-8.

mollica@vindy.com