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Haas helps Cards go wire-to-wire
By Greg Gulas
YOUNGSTOWN
Like most first-year head coaches, Cardinal Mooney boys basketball coach Carey Palermo keeps looking for that signature win so necessary in building a young program.
On Friday, he might just have found his signature player in sophomore Pete Haas.
Haas had a team-high 23 points, scoring 15 of his team’s 17 first-quarter points and the Cardinals never trailed in the game as Cardinal Mooney (3-3) defeated Lake Center Christian 59-46 to snap a three-game tailspin and get back to the .500 mark.
With the loss, the Tigers (3-3) fell to .500 and had their modest two game win streak snapped.
“This was a big bounce back win for us after losing three straight games,” Haas said. “We had a good week of practice and with the momentum that we generated tonight, will need to build off of it with a big week coming up and games against Warren JFK, Boardman and Ursuline.”
Haas hit all three of his triples in the initial period, helped the Cardinals build a 17-5 advantage with under a minute remaining and then settled for a 17-8 lead at the quarter when the Tigers’ John Paul Miller nailed a bucket from beyond the arc as time expired.
Miller finished with a game-high 29 with 12 of his points coming in the final period of play.
A put-back from Vinny Gentile at 4:38 of the second quarter increased the Cardinals’ lead to 24-11, but five points by Miller led a 10-6 charge by Lake Center Christian as they pulled to within 30-21 at the intermission.
“Any game we play right now is great, simply because we’re a young team that just needs to play. We returned just three letterwinners from last year and one of those players, Pat Pelini, is currently sidelined with an injury,” Palermo added. “We’ll be great fundamentally, execute offensively and play solid defense, then we’ll go through a costly two minute lapse. We must learn to play all 32 minutes, not just 25 so the goal remains the same and that is to get better every day and build toward March.”
A bucket by Jordan Standford with 1:41 left in the third quarter helped the Cardinals open a 40-25 lead, settling for a 43-29 margin with one period remaining.
In the final session, Haas’ two free throws at the 5:10 mark gave Mooney its largest lead of the game at 51-35, but Miller scored 10 of the Tigers’ final 11 points to make it a respectable 59-46 final score.
“We’re growing and have young players working in a new system,” said Tigers first-year head coach Phil Budervic.
“We played great defense, but weren’t as aggressive as we needed to be on the glass. We just couldn’t put the biscuit in the bucket and that was costly. There’s still a long way to go and we’ll learn from this as we go forward.”