43
Girard pulls away from Springfield in physical second half
By Charles grove
GIRARD
The Girard duo of Darren Tiggett and Mike Guyer was too much for the Springfield Tigers as the Indians grinded out a 60-57 home victory to end their regular season.
Tiggett’s 15 points and Guyer’s 12 were enough to pull off the win in a game that featured 10 ties and 11 lead changes.
Mark Standohar added 11 points to the Girard cause, hitting three 3-pointers while Springfield was led by Graham Mincher’s 24 points. Jordan Capoullez added 12 in the loss.
After trailing Springfield 26-22 at the half, Girard head coach Craig Hannon told his players to up the tempo, which they did. The Indians (13-9) scored 38 second-half points after being limited to six in the second quarter.
“We wanted to push the pace a little more,” Hannon said. “They were getting their hands on a lot of offensive rebouds and I just felt like we needed to get our defensive rebounds and push the pace from there to speed the game up and I thought we did a good job of that.”
Mincher, the all-time leading scorer for Springfield (17-4), ended up with an impressive statline with eight field goals and six free throws to lead the Tigers. But Girard gave Mincher fits most of the night with constant face-guarding and double teams which never allowed him to get into a real rhythm.
“We tell Graham all the time any time he’s going against teams with quality they know if they do a nice job taking him away it’s going to give them an opportunity to win and that’s what [Girard] did tonight,” Springfield head coach Eric Fender said.
Early on, Girard found success running high-post plays against Springfield’s zone defense. Multiple cuts in the lane across the zone led to attractive looks at the basket.
“We try to work inside out against the zone and I thought our guys did a good job finding that area and making sure we worked out from the high post,” Hannon said.
The game was close throughout three quarters, but a 7-2 run to open up the final quarter gave the Indians a 46-39 lead after a steal and layup by Girard’s Durrel Richardson. Springfield’s Grant Nezbeth was elbowed in the face on the other end of the court, leading to the steal. Nezbeth sat out the rest of the game icing his face and will be evaluated today.
From there on, Girard’s obvious size advantage took over.
“We knew going into the season size was going to be a big impact on us,” Fender said. “It definitely took a toll on us [once Nezbeth exited the game].
Part of that size advantage was courtesy of Tiggett, who had nine of his 15 points after halftime, including back-to-back layups on which he was was fouled. Hannon said Tiggett creates his own plays by rebounding the basketball.
“We don’t really run many plays for [Tiggett],” Hannon said. “He just goes and gets the ball off the glass. He’s tough to keep off of there and it’s hard to game plan when he does that.”
The Tigers were able to cut the deficit to three on a Jake Ford layup to make it 46-43, but the Indians wouldn’t allow the game to get that close again until the final play before the clock expired.
With the Indians now able to focus on the postseason, Hannon said he needs his team to improve on everything. Girard takes on Ravenna Southeast in a sectional semifinal on Feb. 23 at home. The winner of that game takes on top-ranked Canfield three days later for a chance at a sectional title.
“We’ve got to turn everything up because we’ve got a tough road ahead of us,” Hannon said.
Springfield hosts Sebring on Friday in its regular-season finale.