St. Vincent-St. Mary celebrated Senior Night and Valentine’s Day with a home win over rival Walsh Jesuit 67-42 Tuesday night behind a suffocating, opportunistic defense.
The Fighting Irish (11-7) jumped on a couple of Walsh (10-7) miscues early, transforming turnovers into easy points and building a double-digit lead four minutes into the game. Walsh committed 19 turnovers, 11 in the first half.
“We knew Walsh’s ball-handling was suspect, so we got up in them,” St. V-M coach Dru Joyce said. “Playing defense like that, that’s what we do. It’s hard for teams when they come to play us to duplicate [that kind of defense in practice].”
Seniors D.J. Blanks and Treyvon Crater each stole three passes in the first half and St. Vincent-St. Mary built an 18-point lead.
Walsh coach John Norris’ post-game analysis was simple: no ball control.
“We didn’t take care of the basketball, that’s it,” Norris said. “If we don’t value each possession and turn it over that much against a team like St. Vincent-St. Mary, we’re going to have runs against us like we had tonight.”
As Walsh struggled to find a rhythm, the Fighting Irish put together 11-0 runs in both the second and third quarter. The first run came just after Walsh cut the St. V-M lead to four points and put the Warriors in a sizable hole. The second run, which brought the score to 46-26 in the third quarter, effectively ended the game.
“Basketball is a game of runs,” Joyce said. “With timeouts, I got them refocused and we put some things together.”
Senior forward Lorenzo Cugini led the way for St. Vincent-St. Mary with a game-high 24 points on 8-of-11 shooting, including 4-of-7 from 3-point range.
“I was hitting my shots so I just kept shooting,” Cugini said. “We came out with a lot of energy and wanted to get on them quick. We knew we could take the breath out of them.”
Blanks turned in one of his most balanced offensive performances of the season. Blanks contributed everywhere on the floor, with 14 points, six rebounds, six assists and three steals.
Blanks says he doesn’t care about his point total (he entered Tuesday night averaging 19.5 per game), as long as he can help the team.
“I wasn’t a scoring threat, but I was able to be more of an all-around guy tonight,” Blanks said. “My game is evolving and I’m becoming better. And what’s better is that as a team, we’re playing better.”
Crater contributed seven points, six assists and five steals. Joyce was pleased with all three of his seniors’ output in a game in which emotions could have been running high.
“We talked before the game about how this would be their last game here on this court, and how we wanted to leave it with a good memory,” Joyce said. “They came out focused.”
Cugini and Blanks had different views on how to approach a rival game on Senior Night.
“With it being our last home game and against Walsh, it was double emotion,” Cugini said. “We were ready to go right when we came out.”
Blanks perfers to look at each game as just “the next one.”
“It’s our last game at home so I was pumped, but I don’t care about rivalries,” Blanks said. “It’s just another game to me. When you think about games being rivalries, you rush into things, so it’s better to just take things one at a time.”
Ryan Lewis can be reached at rlewis@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the high school blog at www.ohiomm.com/blogs/varsity_letters/. Also follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/RyanLewis83. Follow ABJ sports on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sports.abj.
