At balanced Div. II tourney the top seed goes to Quakers

By John Bassetti

MINERAL RIDGE — Salem girls basketball coach Jeff Andres may feel a lot better about his top-seeded team’s chances of reaching the regional level this season now that Canfield has moved back to Division I.

But, that doesn’t discount No. 2 Struthers, No. 3 West Branch and No. 4 Hubbard as formidable competition when the Div. II sectional begins at Fitch.

“There’s not a whole lot of disparity between seeds No. 1 and seeds 7 and 8, with records right around .500,” Andres said of the district. “There are decent teams, so we’ve got to be ready to play.”

The Quakers (11-4) were voted the No. 1 seed for the second consecutive year. Last year, Salem lost to Canfield in the district final. It was the same ending in 2008. With Canfield’s departure, West Branch and Crestwood moved in to Fitch.

With no bye, the first assignment for Salem will be Niles, an AAC Red Tier opponent whom the Quakers have beaten twice handily. Salem’s four losses include two at the hands of Canfield and one apiece to Howland and Columbus Brookhaven, a Div. I team.

“Come tournament time, you’ve got to be on your ‘A’ game,” said Andres, whose team has five regular-season games left.

“We have some things to work on and those games will give us an opportunity to get better. Hopefully, we’ll be playing our best ball here in a couple weeks. The bottom line is, we’ve got to take care of business.”

West Branch (10-6) spent the last four years at Massillon and, before that, at Lake when the Warriors won a state title in 2004 with former coach Chuck Campbell.

“We’re in between Stark and Mahoning schools, so we get shifted around depending on who needs a team,” said West Branch coach Walt DeShields.

“We’re familiar with a lot of teams up this way through scouting and things like that,” DeShields said of Southeast and Poland, with Salem and Mooney upcoming soon.

The Warriors will play at Mooney on Feb. 17 to conclude the regular season, then meet the Cardinals seven days later in a sectional final.

West Branch has lost twice each to Northeastern Buckeye Conference rivals Minerva, Canton South and Louisville.

“We don’t have a reason to hang our heads because those are three good teams,” said DeShields. “In 2009, South won at Massillon and went to the regionals before losing to Hathaway Brown.

“We feel we’ve been battled-tested this season,” said DeShields, whose team has four games remaining. “I think we’ll get some wins in there, so we’ll come in pretty strong and pretty confident.”

In the Div. III draw at Mineral Ridge, No. 1 Springfield (15-2) took a bye, then Ursuline jumped on the line right below the Tigers. So, Sandi Kohler’s Springfield team will play the Girard-Ursuline winner on Feb. 21.

But the Tigers still have South Range, United and Liberty on the schedule.

Last year, Kohler’s team was a lower seed and lost to Columbiana in the opening round.

“We were playing well, but last year we sat a while before our last regular-season game and the tournament. I think that’s why we cooled off a little bit because we were playing well when we came in. I think that was a 21‚Ñ2-week layoff before we played,” said Kohler. “This year, it’s a little bit better because Liberty’s later [at end of schedule], which means we won’t sit as long between our last game and our tournament game.”

To earn the No. 1 spot, Kohler said Springfield had a good off-season, which allowed her players to got stronger and mature.

“We have a good chemistry and our kids get along,” she said. “Right now, our focus is our game [today] against South Range. After that, we’ve got to set our sights on playing United and, hopefully, we can get one of the two to at least have a share of the lead. That was our No. 1 goal this year was to win our league.”

Lowellville (15-3) is top-seeded at the Div. IV district hosted by Hubbard.

“We had the best record, so pretty much all the teams in our league plus some others respected us and voted us No. 1,” said coach Tony Matisi, who placed his Rockets on the bracket first.

“I don’t like to play the first day,” Matisi said of his Rockets. “I like to get as much practice as we can. Plus, we try to keep our routine — that is, play the same day as school days. We try to stay away from Saturdays if we can because the kids just sit around all day.”

Lowellville won’t play until the Monday after an opening-day tripleheader on Saturday.

The Rockets will play Jackson-Milton for a third time.

“I hate doing that. I’d like to play someone new because it’s fun for the girls to play someone different. But, sometimes it doesn’t work out.”

Lowellville’s losses were to Springfield, Rochester, Pa. and Western Reserve.

Matisi’s team have won three of the last seven districts: the first two were held at Liberty. Last season the Rockets lost to the state’s No. 1-ranked team, Berlin Hiland, in the regional semifinals.

At Alliance, Boardman earned the No. 1 seed and the Spartans (14-2) will play Canton Timken at 1 p.m. on Feb. 20 in the Div. I tournament. A victory would send Boardman against Perry five days later. Potential matchups loom with Canfield and Canton McKinley.

Spartans coach Ron Moschella thought it coincidental that his team’s schedule this week includes those teams: Perry on Tuesday, Canfield on Wednesday and McKinley (or North Canton Hoover) on Saturday.

“Those are the exact teams I anticipate we’ll play in the tournament. That will mean we’ll play each team three times. I don’t know if that will happen; we’ve got to get by those teams.”

Moschella said he didn’t take a bye because he wants his team to get used to playing.

“I went on line 4 [of the bracket], then Timken eventually had to take us,” he said. “The more times we can play on the court the better it is — getting used to that atmosphere.”

In 2009, the Spartans lost to McKinley in the district championship game.

bassetti@vindy.com