Saturday, January 16, 2016
By Greg Gulas
NEW MIDDLETOWN
Heading into Friday night’s Inter-Tri County League boys’ basketball game with South Range, Springfield was looking to make it eight straight wins against its Red Tier foes.
Graham Mincher and Jake Ford made sure the Raiders’ streak stayed intact.
Mincher scored a game-high 26 points and Ford added 17 as the Tigers defeated the Raiders, 59-42 to take over sole possession of the league’s top tier.
“We needed to play good defense tonight in order to win and when you hold a team like South Range to just 42 total points, you’ve done a good job defensively,” Mincher said. “This was the best game that we played as a team, adding a cushion to our halftime lead by scoring the first two buckets of the second half and then feeding off of everyone’s energy. We also executed our plays.”
A 3-pointer and bucket by Mincher, and two free throws by Ford staked the Tigers (9-3, 4-0) to the early 7-3 advantage.
With the score 11-6 in favor of Springfield, triples by South Range’s Mark Vennetti and Preston Stitt pulled the Raiders (10-3, 3-1) to within 14-12 before Mincher’s bucket made it 16-12 after the initial period.
Neither team could mount any offense in the second frame, both scoring just seven points in the quarter as Springfield settled for a 23-19 lead at intermission.
Six points by Mincher and four more by Ford after the half enabled the Tigers to build a 35-29 margin with eight minutes remaining.
“The goal was to maintain our focus on them when they had the ball,” Ford added. “Coach [Eric] Fender always tells us to play good defense and want it more that your opponent.”
Holding a six-point lead with a quarter to play, two buckets by Mincher and another by Ford to start the final session gave the Tigers a 41-29 margin and a lead that South Range could not overcome.
A bucket by Daniel Ritter cut the Springfield lead to 41-31, but a hoop and conventional three-point play by Springfield Local’s Grant Nezbeth extended the Tigers lead to 15 points, 46-31.
A Ritter bucket with 1:33 left cut the Tigers’ lead back to 10 points at 50-40, but Springfield Local went on to score nine of the game’s final 11 points for their fifth consecutive victory.
Ritter ended up with a team-high 18 points for South Range.
“I have a lot of respect for head coach John Cullen and the South Range basketball program. Tonight we contested their shots, hit the glass, limited their second chance points and got key rebounds,” Fender said.
“We forced them to do some things that they probably weren’t comfortable doing. This is a nice win, but we’re still just taking it one game at a time and not looking ahead.”
The Tigers outscored the Raiders 24-13 in the final period and 36-23 in the second half as South Range fell to 3-3 on the road.
“We looked like we barely practiced for tonight’s game and we prepared as well as we could have prepared,” Cullen said.
“We probably had the clearest picture going into a game in terms of what we wanted to accomplish. The things that they gave us we didn’t take advantage of, plus, we didn’t run our offense when we were in scoring positions.”