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| Mustangs Let 9-1Montgomery County Get Away As Poor Shooting From The Field and Free Throw Line Contribute In Handing Short Handed Mustangs Their Second Season Loss While It Was All About McDole and Smith Being Out The Story Line In This One Is Actually Not About McDole and Smith Being Out |
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| While the big question mark in everybody's mind coming into tonight's game was - Can the Mustangs compete with the State's Number Seventeenth ranked 9-1 Montgomery County Indians without the services of Evan McDole and Kevin Smith - the answer was a resounding YES. Through the first 23 and a half minutes of the ballgame the Mustangs maintained a 39-34 lead, were being permitted to play for the last shot of the period with the possession arrow pointing our way to start the fourth quarter and the Mustangs going to the line to shoot the bonus on the next Indian personal foul, |
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| while the Mustangs had only commited 3 violations. Things appeared to be falling into place for a Montgomery County shorthanded victory and finally a date with the vaunted Pendleton County Wildcats in the MCIT semis on Friday night in the Mason County Fieldhouse. That's when the worm turned. A Mustang turnover resulting in an Indian basket cut the Mustang lead to 39-36 at the end of the third period and a similar event to start the fourth quarter brought the Indians to within a point at 39-38 and put "Big Mo" in a red jersey. From that point on the Mustangs seemed to get defensive instead of aggressive, commited personal fouls number four, five, and six on "act of shooting fouls," shot poorly from the field and the line, saw Jason Cooper foul out with four minutes to play in the game, get out-rebounded two to one and as they would say - "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, How Did You Enjoy The Show???" Final Score Montgomery County 52 - Mustangs 45 making for a somber ride back to the Avenue of Champions to practice until next Thursday when we will take it out on - Scratch That - Take on, I meant to say, the Lloyd Memorial Juggernauts, who better come ready to play as the Mustangs will return to full-strength with the return of Kevin Smith |
| t and Evan McDole to the starting lineup. Looking back on the Montgomery County game, it actually could have been much worse. Did you know that the Mustangs were a combined 13/40 from the field, 18 of 34 from the free-throw line; got outrebounded 40-21 for the game and only had two field-goals in the second half. Again, it was the superior defensive efforts of the Mustangs in the first three periods which allowed our guys to keep it as close as it was. A lesser team with those numbers would have automatically been |
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| blown out. If we gained nothing else, some of our underclassmen gained what we hope is valuable experience here on the grand stage of the Mason County Fieldhouse which will benefit them down the road. Expect better results in the JV MCIT here Saturday. While this one stings, who would have thought that we would beat Clark County in Winchester, Oak Hills in the Cintas Center, and go 2-1 in the 5th/3rd without Kevin Smith, or even give the Montgomery County Indians a run for their money with Smith, McDole and then Jason Cooper disappearing like characters out of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. The bottom line is we are very disappointed in the loss tonight. We've come to expect better. We will return to action 100% next Thursday for the first time since December 17th. Our biggest learning from this game is that IT'S SURE MORE FUN TO WIN. |
| Box Score: Mustangs: Seiter 1-0-1/4-3, Franzen 1-0-0/3-2, Anderson 1-0-1/2-3, Schenk 0-0-4/4-4, McCarthy 3-0-0/0-6 Uebel 0-0-3/4-3, Mutsch 2-0-9/17-13, Cooper 54-1-0/0-11 Totals: 12-1-18/34-45 Indians: Carty 5-0-5/6-15, Kelley 0-1-6/6-9, High 2-0-0/0-4, Sargent 2-0-6/10-10, Lykins 3-0-1/1-7 Thacker 1-0-2/2-4, Roland 0-0-1/3-1 Totals: 13-1-23/28-52 The difference in the ballgame clearly spelled out in the box score totals is the free-throw category where the Indians hit a sterling 23 of 28, while the Mustangs managed only 18 of 34. |
| Photos Courtesy of Mr. Tim Cooper |
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