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Chaney beats East for the fourth time this year
Chaney beats East for the fourth time
By Brian Dzenis
YOUNGSTOWN
Even if it got harder each time, Chaney still found a way to beat East.
The Golden Bears put up their best fight in their fourth and final meeting with the Cowboys this season, but they couldn’t find a way to vanquish their city rivals as Chaney won 66-53 in a sectional semifinal.
“It gets hard. They learn everything,” said Chaney’s Sharrod Taylor, who had a game-high 17 points. “You have to come up with new plays and you have to remember the new plays and forget your old plays.”
Tuesday marked Chaney’s first tournament game after six seasons of the program being dormant. The school’s athletic department dissolved after the 2011-12 academic year. The Cowboys’ comeback campaign has been a revelation as they’ve gone 18-5 with the No. 3 seed moving on to host sixth-seeded Girard on Friday.
“Our players are so young that they don’t understand the magnitude of this game,” Chaney coach Marlon McGaughy said. “I thought this was a trap game for us. They don’t understand that you can lose one game and it’s over.
“We didn’t have a great practice and I kept saying over and over that we needed to prepare for them.”
Chaney broke open a back-and-forth contest by closing out the first quarter with a 12-2 run. That run was sparked when the Cowboys’ Jamyson Tubbs turned a four-point play with a 3-pointer plus-one. East’s Jarail Jenkins responded with a layup, but Chaney scored four straight baskets to take a 26-17 lead.
“It was our fast break,” McGaughy said. “We get the ball up and down continuously and if we get stopped, kick it out for a corner 3.”
That double-digit cushion held up for most of the second quarter until East started to crawl back into the game. A bucket plus one from Gabe Green and a late three from Carl Sadler opened up some interesting possibilities for the Golden Bears in the second half with the visitors down by just five points.
But East couldn’t get any closer. Despite not allowing a made shot from the floor for the first three minutes of the third quarter, East got in foul trouble to the tune of 11 fouls to Chaney’s two in the third quarter.
“We’re tough guys and we don’t cry for anything. We don’t anybody to give us anything because we’re East,” Golden Bears coach Kevin Cylar said. “At East, we don’t want anyone giving us anything, so we’re not going to cry about the officials.”
Chaney labored through that third quarter and didn’t really take advantage of the extra free-throw attempts, going 5 for 12 in that stretch.
“We wanted to play defense,” Chaney’s William Brown said. “We knew defense was our game and if the offense wasn’t working the defense would get it done for us.”
East managed just seven points in the third quarter. Sadler led the Golden Bears with 14 points. After Taylor, Marquel Gillespie was the next highest scorer for Chaney with 14 points.
East closed out the season 1-22. But Cylar, who also was the offensive coordinator for the football team and track coach, said this was the best team he’s ever coached.
“I got a bunch of guys who are trying to win at life,” Cylar said. “We weren’t worrying about basketball. I have a bunch of guys who people have given up on. I didn’t have a guy who played structured varsity basketball ever. For them to come and be beating Warren Harding at halftime, beating the Boardman Spartans at halftime, leading Warren JFK and Struthers by 15 at one point ... we can compete, but we came up short.
“This has been the most gratifying experience I’ve ever had coaching.”