Irish win Holy War as Cardinals go cold

January 7, 2017 at 12:08a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Dakota Hobbs and Anthony Howell each had 12 points and Ursuline held Cardinal Mooney scoreless for 13:11 over a three-quarter stretch as the Irish beat the Cardinals 40-25 in the basketball version of the Holy War on Friday night.

The game also marked the first meeting between Ursuline head coach Keith Gunther and his former standout guard and assistant, Carey Palermo, Cardinal Mooney’s first-year head coach.

“Cardinal Mooney has a very talented player in Pete Haas, so all week during practice coach Gunther preached defense, defense, defense, deny the ball and then work the ball around offensively,” Hobbs said. “We run the court really well and like to score in transition, which we did tonight.”

While the offense lagged at times for both teams it was an entirely different story defensively as Ursuline held the Cardinals scoreless in the second quarter and to single digits in two other quarters.

For Gunther, the teacher, going up against his former pupil reminded him of the first time that he went up against his mentor, Roy Sembach of the Newton Falls Tigers.

“It’s always exciting to go up against one of your former assistants because it says a lot about your program. Watching Cardinal Mooney on film you see a hard-nosed defensive team that gets after it,” Gunther stated. “There are other similarities as well. We both want to win and it just reminded me about the time that I spent as an assistant to coach Sembach, then went up against him after I became head coach at Ursuline.”

Two free throws by Johnnie Mikos at 3:06 of the opening period gave the Cardinals (3-5) an early 7-5 advantage, but the Fighting Irish (8-3) reeled off the final four points for a 9-7 lead after the first eight minutes of play.

It turned out to be Cardinal Mooney’s only lead of the game and its final points until 6:05 of the third period.

“I thought that we defended well the entire game, but when they went to a 2-3 defense early in the second quarter we got timid and just didn’t attack,” Palermo said. “We lost confidence, there were a few turnovers and while there wasn’t a big run by either team, we didn’t score and that really hurt. The scoring drought also hurt us, but we’ll take this game and learn from it as we move forward.”

Two 3-pointers by Anise Algahmee in the second quarter allowed Ursuline to open a 21-7 halftime lead as the Irish held Cardinal Mooney scoreless the entire session.

Then Cardinals’ next bucket didn’t come until the 6:05 mark of the third quarter when Mikos hit the first of his two shots from beyond the arc, this ending a 20-0 run by Ursuline.

Howell went scoreless in the opening half, but his 12 points after intermission helped the Fighting Irish open a 36-19 margin.

“Coach Gunther told me at halftime just to be patient and not to panic because the ball will come inside to me. ‘Just be ready,’ he told me,” Howell added. “We knew that coach Palermo knew a lot of our plays, so we put in about 10 new plays, including a few new out-of-bounds plays that we will be able to use the remainder of the season.”