MANSFIELD, Ohio — Had Tuesday’s Division IV regional semifinal game been a 100-meter dash, St. Peter’s would have gotten run off the track.
The Spartans stumbled out of the blocks while super-charged North Baltimore did its best Usain Bolt impression. The Tigers led 10-4 midway through the first quarter.
As the old adage goes, though, it’s a marathon. not a sprint.
St. Peter’s outscored North Baltimore 68-35 the rest of the way and sailed to a 72-45 win to advance to the Elite Eight for a second straight season. The Spartans (25-2) will play Delphos St. John’s (20-4) for a regional championship at 7 p.m. Friday at the University of Toledo’s Savage Arena. The winner will punch its ticket to next week’s Final Four at Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center in Columbus.
The same energy that spurred North Baltimore to its early lead may have been its undoing — at least as far as St. Peter’s coach Joe Jakubick is concerned. The one-time NCAA national scoring champ has a finer appreciation than most for the mental part of the game.
“Sometimes what happens is you burn yourself out,” Jakubick said. “A lot of times with high school teams, you get the community involved and there’s so much hype and it gets you so excited.
“A lot of times, I feel, you can waste a lot of energy rather than focusing on the task at hand.”
North Baltimore was making its first-ever appearance in a regional tournament. St. Peter’s played on the same stage, with many of the same players, last March.
“If you gave me a choice of being there for the first time and being there before,” Jakubick said, “I’ll take being there before every time.”
All five of St. Peter’s starters played in last year’s regional final loss to Van Wert Lincolnview. Tyson Kent, Jared Jakubick and Mason Campbell were starters while Elijah Cobb and Jake Gurski came off the bench.
These Spartans who will take the floor Friday, however, bear little resemblance to those who had no answers for Lincolnview in a 71-51 loss.
“When we lost last year, Tyson, Jared, Mason and Elijah lived in the gym,” Joe Jakubick said. “You have no idea the time they put in all summer. No one would believe it.
“If we’re not successful, it’s not going to be because we didn’t put in the time and effort.”
Kent, the younger Jakubick, Campbell and Cobb scored 63 of St. Peter’s 72 points Tuesday. All four average more than 10 points a game.
“When you see them, they are night-and-day from last year,” Joe Jakubick said. “They’re just different animals. If you saw them last year, they were still boys playing. They’re young men now.”
And these Spartans still have a chip on their shoulders from last year’s regional final loss. Their pregame shooting shirts have the St. Peter’s logo on the front along with their adopted motto for the tournament: “Unfinished Business.”
“That was my motivation the entire summer,” Jared Jakubick said. “Every time I stepped on the court, that’s all I could really think about.
“It drove me to work extremely hard in the summer hopefully to not feel that again.”
St. Peter’s will have its hands full with St. John’s. The Blue Jays beat Holgate 40-25 in Tuesday’s late game behind 14 points from 6-foot-8 senior center Tim Kreeger.
St. John’s hasn’t allowed more than 36 points in its four tournament wins. The Spartans haven’t scored fewer than 59 points in any of their five tourney victories.
Even if St. Peter’s can’t get the tempo in its favor and end up in a slugfest, don’t expect the Spartans to come unhinged. That’s not their style.
“These guys never really panic. It’s a sense that we have to fight,” Kent said. “That’s the mentality we have, it’s going to be OK. We’re a fighting team and we’ll do anything it takes to win.”
