Mooney captures battle of the Cards

It was Mooney’s first win over Canfield since the 2003 basketball season.

By CHUCK HOUSTEAU

Vindicator correspondent

YOUNGSTOWN — It’s no secret that the Cardinal Mooney High boys basketball team is off to its best start in many years.

Mooney connected on 10 of 15 free throws in the fourth quarter and held off a late Canfield charge before pulling away to a 59-50 win over the Cards Tuesday night.

It’s been a while since Mooney defeated the Cardinals and started a season so well that many on the Mooney staff wondered aloud about the last time it happened.

It’s been over six seasons (2003) since Cardinal Mooney, led by Curtis Ingram, defeated Canfield and had a successful season.

“It’s a good win for our program,” said Mooney coach Chris Kohl. “That’s a nice ‘W’ when you get one over a John Cullen-coached Canfield team.

“It got a little ugly for awhile. It got a little physical, which is what we anticipated but we hung tough and made our free throws down the stretch.”

The physical play cost Canfield its best player, Mike Podolsky, who was ejected from the game with 6:02 left in the third quarter after being assessed a flagrant technical foul.

Podolsky will likely miss Canfield’s next two games because of the ejection.

Canfield trailed Mooney 29-23 at the half but had cut the Mooney lead to 29-28 by scoring five unanswered points when Podolsky was ejected.

“In the second half we started out just the way we wanted to and got back in the game when that happened,” said Canfield coach John Cullen about the loss of Podolsky. “Right when things were going our way at that point we lose Mike.

“Now even though we have Mooney on their heels, we have to do it with kids that never have played a lot before.”

Mooney regrouped behind the strong play of senior Chuck Gruber, who scored 13 points including two big baskets in the third quarter that got things back on track for Mooney.

The Cards pulled out to a 41-34 lead at the end of the third quarter.

Mooney opened up a lead of 12 points in the fourth quarter, 53-41, before Canfield made one last run behind Justin Vrabel, Joe Hoelzel and Gene Wollet.

Canfield chipped away and cut the lead to 53-48 with 52.8 seconds left on a basket by Vrabel but could get no closer.

Mooney did a good job of knocking down free throws to ice the game.

Jeff Chahine made four free throws while Danny Reese added three in the final quarter as Mooney pulled away to a nine-point win.

Overall Mooney was 18 of 29 from the line while Canfield made only 7 of 19 from the charity stripe.

“We forced them to foul us in the fourth quarter by going to the basket and fortunately we did a good job of knocking down our free throws,” Kohl said.

Mooney got off to a good start by attacking the basket and getting a lot of easy shots against a Canfield team that relies on defense.

“We didn’t do a very good job in the first half,” Cullen said. “We let them get behind us and they worked to get a lot of layups and open shots.”

Mooney made 7 of 8 shots in the first quarter to open up a 18-14 lead.

Reese scored five of his 12 points in the period.

Canfield battled back and get the game close as Podolsky scored all eight of his points in the first half.

Hoelzel and Vrabel led the Cards in scoring with 12 points apiece while Vrabel pulled down a game-high 12 rebounds.