MG Indians celebrate Blue Division title with win

By ROB HAMILTON

When the Mount Gilead boys’ bas­ket­ball last cel­e­brated a league title, the Mid-Ohio Ath­letic Con­fer­ence had not yet been created.

In 1983, while the Indi­ans were in the now-defunct Mid-Ohio Con­fer­ence, they took the title with a 12–2 record. Mem­bers of that team were on hand Fri­day as this year’s Mount Gilead team pounded Ridgedale 65–32.

After the game, the school rec­og­nized their ‘83 champs while cel­e­brat­ing this year’s Blue Divi­sion cham­pi­onship. The team fin­ished 18–2 over­all and 12–1 in league play to eas­ily win the Blue by six games over Pleas­ant. They also had the best league record of any of the 10 teams, as Red champ Buck­eye Val­ley fin­ished one game back at 11–2.

“This is a spe­cial night for the com­mu­nity, school and kids,” said Indian head coach Tom Cooper. “We’re very proud of this year and believe this is the best reg­u­lar sea­son record in his­tory. That’s some­thing these kids can be proud of their whole lives.”

Before the cel­e­bra­tion, the Indi­ans had to con­tend with the Rock­ets. For the first quar­ter, Ridgedale stuck with Mount Gilead, with the Indi­ans tak­ing a 13–10 lead at the very end of the quar­ter on a Jake Sturges three-pointer.

“The guys were so excited, they came out a lit­tle tight,” said Cooper of the slow start.

After the first quar­ter, though, it was all Mount Gilead. Kolby Sny­der scored four straight points to open the period and later, with the score at 18–14, Mount Gilead picked up nine in a row to go up by 13.

The Indi­ans led 29–18 at the half and then outscored the Rock­ets 22–9 in the third quar­ter to move in front by 24 points in a game they would win by 33.

Ethan Har­ris fin­ished with 21 points to lead Mount Gilead, while Sturges scored 19 and Sny­der added 10.

After the game, the team cut down the nets in cel­e­bra­tion. Cooper felt his team, who had suf­fered through some grow­ing pains over the years, had earned this night.

“We knew this junior and senior class was spe­cial, so we played them (var­sity) young — a trial by fire — and let them learn,” he said.

The coach felt that a ded­i­ca­tion to defense was what allowed them to claim a league title. Cooper noted that this group of play­ers has always shown offen­sive tal­ent, but needed to exhibit that skill on both ends of the court.

“They’ve come a long way defensively,” he said. “We were very good offen­sively last year, but not defen­sively. This year, they’ve taken that step.”

Cooper isn’t plan­ning on sim­ply being happy with a league title, as he’s hop­ing for a good post­sea­son run this year. While the team has an extended break before play­ing their first play­off game on Feb. 29, this isn’t the first time they’ve gone 10-plus days between con­tests this year.

After going from Jan. 14 to Jan. 24 with no games, the Indi­ans didn’t lose a sin­gle game after that break.

“Hope­fully, it works out again,” said Cooper. “We’ll give them a cou­ple days off and let them enjoy this week­end and then go back to work and get ready for the sec­ond season.”

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Feb 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.