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Canfield overcomes huge early deficit
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Poland’s Jacob Burns (14) scores as East’s Steven Young (23) defends during the first quarter of Tuesday’s game at Poland High School. The Bulldogs won, 73-39.
By Steve Wilaj
HOWLAND
Occasionally in practice, the Canfield High School basketball coaches put their varsity team in a situation where it trails the junior varsity squad by a significant amount of points. The goal is for the varsity Cardinals to eliminate the deficit as quickly as possible.
Tuesday against Howland, Canfield found itself in the exact position when the Tigers jumped out to a 15-0 lead after the first three minutes of play.
“We’re used to it from practice,” Cardinals forward Mason Mangapora said. “We’ve been exposed to it a lot, so we knew how to handle it.”
Quickly climbing out of the early hole, Canfield regained the lead by the end of the first quarter and never gave it back as the Cardinals defeated the Tigers, 82-64, in their season opener at Howland.
“We understood that we weren’t going to make up the deficit with one shot,” Canfield coach Todd Muckleroy said. “We had to really chip away and it speaks volumes of my guys.
“We could have folded with it being early on in the season, but we just grinded it out.”
Canfield (1-0, 1-0 All-American Conference Red) took a 22-20 lead after the first quarter on a Mike Yourstowsky buzzer-beating layup.
The Cardinals then outscored Howland 25-16 in the second period and 15-8 in the third to take an 18-point lead into the fourth quarter.
Howland (0-2, 0-2) cut the deficit to 71-63 at the 3:04 mark of the fourth, but that’s as close as it would get. A 3-pointer by Canfield’s Julian Vitto with 2:35 remaining extended the lead back to 11 and ended any Tigers comeback.
“It’s a good first win,” Mangapora said. “It’s against a team that pressured us early and we got the jitters out. Now we can move on and start to build off this.”
Mangapora paced Canfield with 19 points and 10 rebounds. Jake Cummings also scored 15 points for the Cardinals, while Yourstowsky and Vitto each notched 13.
“There are a lot of guys for us that can get in the mix and do good things,” Muckleroy said. “We definitely have a lot of options.”
Howland was led by Luciano Romeo and Tyler Tamarkin’s 15 points apiece. Julian Lanier also scored 12.
“We have the firepower to compete, but when we play teams as well coached as Canfield with disciplined players, you have to stay a full game,” first-year Howland coach Jason Lee said. “You take three minutes off and that lead goes away real quick, as we saw.”