ONTARIO – Edna Albright climbed the ladder to cut down the last strands of the net Friday night after Plymouth routed Mansfield Christian, 58-35, to win a Division IV sectional basketball title.
When a team scores points in bunches the way the Big Red have done this season, it’s only fitting the woman who works hard to keep the Plymouth scorebook get a piece of the prize at the end.
“Edna has kept our book for close to 30 years,” Plymouth coach Troy Keene said. “She has been with us all these years and she never got a chance to help us cut down the net. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to do it.”
The Big Red (22-2), with a pair of 1,000-point scorers, got off to a slow start against the Flames (13-9), trailing 9-7 after one quarter. All that did was fire up Plymouth, who started rolling midway through the second period at Ontario High School.
The Big Red ran off a 10-spurt in two minutes of the second quarter to build a 26-18 halftime lead. The roll continued in the third quarter, even after high-scoring 6-4 junior post Tyrell Edmiston went to the bench with his fourth foul less than three minutes into the frame.
Plymouth led 31-19 when Edmiston took a seat – and then outscored MCS 11-9 the rest of the way to take a 42-28 edge into the final quarter. The Flames were never able to close the gap.
“We are deep enough that we can survive when something like that happens,” Keene said. “We have been working on a five-guard offense so we just went with that.”
With his fellow 1,000-point scorer on the bench, junior guard Tyson Beebe and his teammates picked up the slack.
“Tyson is a captain and a leader of this team,” Keense said. “He stepped up big tonight when Tyrell went out. I couldn’t be more proud of him.”
MCS coach John Kurtz said his team had the slower pace it wanted in the first quarter.
“Late in the second quarter, we had some turnovers and gave them some easy transition baskets. It took the pressure off them and our team has had trouble scoring in the last few games. It only takes Plymouth a couple of minutes to run a lot of points on the board,” Kurtz said. “We knew coming in we would need to play a perfect game to win. Plymouth is just a very good basketball team.”
Beebe led Plymouth with 15 points and eight assists. Despite sitting out much of the second half, Edmiston had 12 points, eight rebounds and four assists. Senior guard Trevor Hammond chipped in 14 points.
Junior guard Brendan Ernsberger came off the bench to lead the Flames with 12 points. Sophomore Brandon Mount added eight and sophomore Stevie Brown added seven.
Plymouth shot 57 percent from the field (21 of 37) and added nine of 16 at the line. MCS shot 33 percent from the floor (13 of 40) and five of 12 at the line. Plymouth had a 26-19 edge on the boards and committed just one more turnover than Plymouth, 14-13.
Plymouth advances to the Division IV district tournament at Willard and will likely play Sandusky St. Marys on Tuesday.
