By GENO BOVA
Beakon Sports Writer
YOUNGSTOWN — On Tuesday in front of its home crowd, the Cardinal Mooney boys basketball team notched its first statement victory of the year. The Cards dominated rival Boardman 53-29 to move back to .500 on the year.
Boardman stuck around early but Mooney pulled away in the second half, outscoring the Spartans 31-14. Leading the pack for the Cardinals offensively was senior Ashton O’Brien with 15.
“We had some extra motivation tonight for sure” said O´Brien “we held them on defense like we wanted to and got it done.”
Also contributing was Eddie Nieves with 11 and Rocco Turner and Jibri Carter adding 8.
“We shot the ball well and were pretty solid on defense. It’s a great win for us, it was a big game and it should give us a big momentum boost for the rest of the year” said Carter.
Obviously every win is important, but for Cardinal Mooney, a win against Boardman means a little more. Snagging the W in this rivalry means bragging rights for the next year and a lot of added confidence for the rest of the season. Senior Will Desmond will be the first to tell you there’s nothing quite like beating the Spartans.
“I was really excited about this one. This win is huge for us. There’s no better feeling than beating Boardman. I got to beat them in football too so I´m two for two on the year. It’s been a good year so far,” he said.
The big rivalry win makes the Cardinals 3-3 on the season with one more game to go before Christmas. With Christmas break being an important checkpoint for the basketball season, the Cardinals would love to go into the holidays with a winning record. They get their chance to improve to 4-3 on the year when they travel to Campbell Memorial High School to take on the Red Devils on Friday Dec. 22.
“It would be nice to head into break on a little winning streak.” said senior Nick Pregibon “We just want to keep getting better every game and get ready for the playoffs.”
Mooney plays two more games over break as well. They play NDCL at home on Dec. 29 and then Valley Christian on the road Dec. 30. The path doesn’t get any easier for Mooney as the three teams being played over break have a combined record of 10-6. If the Cardinals can sled smoothly through Christmas break they´ll find themselves 6-3 heading into the New Year.
Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.