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Harding rebounds from first loss
POLAND
Andy Vlajkovich isn’t Vince Lombardi, John Wooden or Tony D’Amato from “Any Given Sunday.”
Warren Harding’s first-year boys basketball coach doesn’t have to be.
Just 24 hours removed from their first defeat of the year, an eight-point loss at Euclid, the Raiders had to turn around and face Sharon, a top team from Western Pa.
“I don’t have too many motivational issues; they want to win,” Vlajkovich said after Harding’s 78-71 win over the Tigers. “To be honest, I didn’t need to say anything, or give some Knute Rockne speech. I didn’t need to.”
The Raiders (3-1) opened up a quick 6-0 lead and forced three Sharon turnovers before the Tigers scored their first points.
“We let [Friday’s loss] go as quickly as possible,” said senior guard O’sha Jackson. “We just had to listen to the coaches and come out with the win.”
Jackson led Harding with 21 points and Anthony Bell added 18 with seven rebounds. Mik’Quan Dorsey grabbed six rebounds to go with 13 points.
“We don’t have a star player,” Vlajkovich said. “Some nights, this guy’s going to get 20, or this guy’s going to get 19. That’s how the game is supposed to be played.”
Dorsey scored eight points in the fourth quarter, holding off a late Sharon run. Junior guard King Garner, who’s listed at 6-foot but is realistically three inches shorter, scored four points with six rebounds after sitting out a majority of the second quarter with three fouls.
“Mik’Quan is playing solid basketball,” Vlajkovich said. “And King Garner, he’s growing up before our eyes. He has a great attitude and just gets better every day.”
The Tigers took their first lead, 18-16, at the 7:23 mark of the second. There were seven lead changes in the quarter before the Raiders took a 38-34 lead to the locker room.
Harding led by eight midway through the third quarter and extended it to 12, 68-56, early in the fourth.
Sharon’s Carnell Hawkins helped key a comeback with two steals, two assists and four points in the second half. Darrell Stovall scored 12 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter and thanks to seven Harding turnovers, the Tigers closed the gap to just five with under four minutes in regulation.
Vlajkovich said defense will be stressed in practice next week, but the late turnovers seemed to hurt him the most.
“Apparently I don’t have a good poker face,” he said. “It may have been physical fatigue leading to mental fatigue — we were just throwing it around the gym. [Sharon] had mental toughness to bounce back on the fly.”
For Harding, Greg Jackson added eight points and Tommy Parry had six. It shot 36 percent from the field.
“With Coach Andy,” O’sha Jackson said, “we’re more of a shooting team.”
A year ago, Sharon finished 19-4. The Raiders went 21-4 last year under Steve Arnold. They lost all five starters coming into this season.
“Any win early in the season gets your guys’ confidence going,” Vlajkovich said. “Those guys need every learning experience they can have. They have to soak up every opportunity and look at it as a chance to get better.”
Sharon’s Khalil Hopson led all scorers with 27 points.