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Mayfield boys basketball: Wildcats fall to Nordonia in season opener | Sports
The specter of COVID-19 has loomed large over sports all year, and that has continued from the fall into the winter sports season.
While many of The News-Herald area’s boys basketball teams have yet to get going, Mayfield opened up its season on Nov. 28 with a matinee against visiting Nordonia.
The Wildcats, featuring a handful of returnees and a slew of new faces who were on the JV squad last season, held a 38-34 lead at halftime.
The Knights opened the second half on a 19-4 run, dominated the boards after halftime, and held off Mayfield down the stretch to prevail, 69-67.
Each team had three double figure scorers. Donovan Coffey (16 points), Hayden Nahra (11), and Noah Adams (10) paced the Wildcats. Matt Hayes (game-high 21), Anthony Lee (17), and Damon Wallace (10) led Nordonia.
But the Knights’ big run coming out of the half and control of the boards (41-29 edge, 24 in the second half) were key factors in keeping Mayfield (0-1) winless to start the campaign.
The novel coronavirus pandemic hasn’t left the Mayfield program unscathed-the Wildcats had to endure two weeks of quarantine after some positive cases and had to cancel its preseason scrimmages.
First-year head coach Will Brand knows that with as much inexperience as his team has, combined with COVID-19-related delays, a learning curve is to be expected.
“We need to learn to compete for four quarters,” said Brand, a Brush graduate and former Cleveland Heights coach. “We need to learn to do the little things, because we’re a smaller team. Things like boxing out, and diving onto the floor after loose balls.
“There were so many loose balls under their basket, that they got, and were able to get easy layups. That killed us.”
Twelve Wildcats saw playing time as Brand tried different combinations to see which worked best. After falling behind, 5-0, to start, Mayfield closed the first quarter on a 9-4 run to take a 19-12 lead, capping the frame on a layup by Frankie Ceraolo, after Coffey stole a pass and fired the ball down court.
The Wildcats trailed for much of the second frame, but caught the Knights, 32-32, on a triple by Charlie Ciuprinskas. After the game was knotted against at 34, Adams and Gio Ditomaso scored to push the Mayfield lead to four at the break.
Nordonia (1-0), which had some trouble with turnovers (20), forced some of its own during its run to start the second half, and continued to cash in on second and third chances at the basket.
“We just talked about taking care of the ball, and executing,” Nordonia coach Dominique Sanders said of the Knights’ third quarter surge. “In the first half, we took a lot of one-pass threes. (Mayfield) did a great job with their ball pressure. I think when we reversed the ball, and screened, and cut hard, we got what we wanted offensively.”
Mayfield, which trailed, 57-48, going into the final stanza, chipped away at its deficit throughout the fourth quarter, and forged a tie at 67-67 on a bucket by Coffey, one of the veteran returnees, with 57 seconds left. Wallace sank two free throws to put Nordonia back on top, and Mayfield was unable to connect on two opportunities in the final seconds.
Joel Jones pulled down 11 rebounds for the Knights, Wallace grabbed eight, and Derek Occhipinti seven. Nahra, another Wildcat veteran, had a team-high 11 boards as part of a double-double to go with 5 assists.
“I’m still kind of learning lineups for us,” Brand said. “We didn’t get a chance to have any preseason scrimmages. I finally found a lineup that was working for us, and we kind of got back into the game. (Nordonia) started to wear down a little bit after we made a couple adjustments, but we just couldn’t get the run that we needed.”
