MANSFIELD — Elijah Cobb isn’t keeping score but the St. Peter’s standout has the upper hand on older brother Marquez.
The Richland Bank Athlete of the Week, Elijah scored 14 points in the Spartans’ 72-56 loss to Cornerstone Christian in the Division IV regional championship game Friday at the Canton Fieldhouse. The regional final appearance was the third straight for Cobb and the Spartans.
Marquez, a 2014 Mansfield Senior graduate, reached the Elite Eight with the Tygers during his senior season.
“He made it to one and this will be my third,” the younger Cobb said after scoring 19 points in a 68-56 regional semifinal win over East Canton earlier in the week. “He doesn’t talk about his experience very often. I know he’s happy for me.”
The Spartans were denied a berth in this week’s Division IV state tournament, but that doesn’t take anything away from Cobb’s season or career. He scored his 1,000th career point in St. Peter’s sectional final victory over Monroeville and was a big reason why the Spartans thundered to the first undefeated regular season since 1963 and won the Division IV Associated Press poll championship.
“We’ve had a great season and we want to keep it going,” Cobb said after the regional semifinal victory. “To go undefeated and reach the regional final again, I don’t know how many people would have predicted that for this team.”
Cobb teamed with fellow senior Jared Jakubick to make arguably the most prolific backcourt in Richland County in a generation. The dynamic duo combined to score 42.5 points, with Cobb averaging 18 points, 6.5 rebounds and 5 assists a night while shooting 57 percent from the field.
“With Elijah and Jared, they just make everyone else on the team pretty dang good,” St. Peter’s coach Joe Jakubick said. “They are special players.
“When you look statistically at what they did, it was just remarkable. And those kids were facing a triangle-and-two or box-and-one a lot of the time. They drew a lot of attention from opposing defenses.”
Primarily a junior varsity player as a freshman, Cobb was the sixth man as the Spartans reached the regional final in 2016 before falling to eventual state runner-up Van Wert Lincolnview. He moved into the starting lineup as a junior, and again helped the Spartans reach the regional championship game. St. Peter’s dropped a 44-43 heart-breaker to Delphos St. John’s in the regional final.
St. Peter’s lost three starters to graduation or transfer, so a return to the regional was anything but a guarantee.
“With only two guys coming back, did anyone think we’d by 27-1?” Joe Jakubick asked in his postgame interview after the loss to Cornerstone Christian. “If some had said we’d be undefeated, would anyone have believed that?
“It was just a special year and something I’ll remember forever.”
