Mustangs vs Beechwood
Wednesday, December 7th
** Broadcast replay available **
Whatever our Freshman and JV Teams had, the varsity team caught it, falling behind early 10-1 before the fans were comfortable in their seats. Following a Ben Franzen time out, our guys regrouped, outscored the home team 13-8, and trailed 18-14 at the end of the first quarter. Playing without Sam Wiillike (and Jack Poe) left our senior seven with only five of them to carry the torch Wednesday evening in Fort Mitchell.
In one of our many rallies to get in position to take the lead, we narrowed the margin to 29-27 mid-second, but Beechwood hit some key shots and re-opened the lead to 37-29 at intermission.
Much like the Newport game, our Mustangs laid a 7-0 run on the Tigers out of the locker room following halftime, narrowing the margin to 42-39, drawing an Erik Goetz time out. The two teams continued to do battle asking and answering scores, until the 1:02 minute mark in the third quarter when we cut the lead to a single point at 51-50, but that was as close as we would come on this night, as the Red and White Tigers outscored us 28-12 from that point to record their first win of the season 79-62.
Beechwood Blue-Chipper, Cameron Boyd lived up to his billing with 23 points, albeit 9 points under his early season average of 32, but the Tigers got a game-changing performance from Jack Sullivan who nailed seven 3-pointers for 21 points, and from just-off-of-the-gridiron Freshman phenom, Cash Harney, who contributed superior ball control and 14 points. Add up the short-handed status of our Mustangs and the addition of two contributing new-to-the-team football players for Beechwood, resulted in our guys absorbing their first loss of the season. Mason Sepate poured in 22 to lead our offensive attack. Brandon Bezold added 16, with three 3s,and Luke Schumacher rounded out our double-figure scorers with 11 points and 11 rebounds, his second double-double of the young season. Anthony Kruse added 9. Our Mustangs were outscored 19-4 on second chance baskets. We will hope for a better fate on Friday night when we return home to the SyDome to play the Harrison County Thoroughbreds who are off to their best start (3-0) since 2000-01.
Neither our Freshmen nor JVs had better luck with the “Beechies”. The Freshmen were handed a 52-29 loss, and the JVs fell 50-35.