MOUNT VERNON – Shad Creamer is unassuming.
At 5-foot-9, he’s often the shortest man on the court. He’s not blindingly fast or shockingly springy.
But he brings something else to the table for Mansfield Senior – something head coach Marquis Skyes called essential, even though it doesn’t show up in the box score.
Shad Creamer brings the juice.
“We’ve gotta have it,” Sykes said. “He is our leader, he’s our best scorer, and he has the most experience out of this crew, so we’re gonna lean on him to do a whole lot.”
It was Creamer’s energy and leadership that propelled Mansfield Senior (5-4, 3-2 Ohio Cardinal Conference) past Mount Vernon (4-11, 3-6) on Friday night, 65-51. And his scoring didn’t hurt, either; the senior point guard tallied a team-high 21 points, 17 of which came in the second half.
“What got me going was my team, and us playing as one and seeing our teamwork come together, and us working as a unit,” Creamer said afterwards. “It really uplifts you, and when you see it doing good, everything feels good. You just have fun when the whole team’s doing good and you see it all working.”
As the Tygers’ emotional leader, Creamer said he worried about his team’s focus coming into Friday night’s contest. Mansfield Senior beat Mount Vernon on Tuesday, 51-38, and he feared complacency might set in before the rematch. Creamer said he did his best to make sure that didn’t happen.
“My only worry was our team coming in, thinking it was gonna be easier – since we already won, that it was just gonna be an automatic win again. I knew it wasn’t gonna be like that, especially playing here,” Creamer said.
“But I just tried to tell them, ‘Just ‘cause we won the other day, doesn’t mean we’re gonna win today.’ We had to come out with that same energy, and we did a pretty good job.”
The two teams traded buckets for most of the first half.
Mount Vernon led 17-15 after one quarter, as five different Yellow Jackets scored. Then the Tygers’ three-point barrage began. Mansfield Senior scored 18 points in the stanza – all on three-pointers – to claim a 33-27 halftime lead.
“This is easily our best shooting night,” Sykes said. “But with that being said, we’ve felt like we’re more than capable of making shots, we just haven’t been shooting very well. And tonight, guys that are capable three-point shooters put it together and knocked down some shots. And for us, that’s huge, because we’ve had a hard time making shots this year.”
Facing foul trouble early on, Creamer was forced to watch large portions of the first half from the bench. When he was able to return in the third quarter, he made his presence felt.
Creamer scored 10 of the Tygers’ 16 points in the period, including three pull-up jumpers that kept the Yellow Jackets at bay. His step-in triple with 2:26 left put Mansfield Senior up 7, and his transition lay-in with 24 seconds remaining stretched the lead to 11 heading into the fourth quarter.
“The expectations are high for him, but he’s put in the work,” Sykes said of Creamer. “He puts in tons of work. He’s a gym rat, he stays in the gym. So his work is paying off for him, and for us.”
The fourth quarter featured more of the same. Mount Vernon narrowed the gap to 9 with 2:46 left, but came no closer. Creamer’s reverse and-one lay-in with 34 seconds left put the final nail in the coffin, as the Tygers left Mount Vernon with the season sweep.
“There were several possessions where we played pretty good defense, and he just made better shots,” Mount Vernon head coach Nick Coon said of Creamer. “And sometimes that happens. Those are the plays we can live with, because our effort was there. We just have to tip our cap to the other player or the other team sometimes.”
Coon said Creamer, a three-year varsity letterman, has given Mount Vernon problems before. In fact, Coon said “he’s had his best game of the season probably two years in a row against us.”
“For whatever reason, against us, he knocks down tough shots, gets to the free-throw line, makes his free throws, has really good games …” Coon said. “He plays with an edge. And that’s how he plays well, when he’s playing with an edge. He brings that to their team.”
Along with Creamer, Mansfield Senior saw quality performances from junior forward Maurice Ware (17 points) and sophomore guard Nathan Haney (14 points). Seven Tygers scored Friday night.
Mount Vernon was led by senior forward Blake Meyer, who scored 21 points. Meyer did most of his damage near the rim, using his physical frame to overpower smaller defenders in the paint. Sophomore guard Hudson Rohler had 14 points for the Yellow Jackets, while senior forward Dayne Burgess had 8.
In the end, Coon said, it came down to offensive firepower. Mansfield Senior had it, and Mount Vernon didn’t.
“I thought we played much better than we did Tuesday night. We were tougher with the basketball; being at home, I think, gave us a little more energy,” Coon said. “But coming into Tuesday night, Mansfield Senior was shooting 24 percent from the three-point line. They were 6-of-13 Tuesday night from the three-point line and then they shot it really well tonight from the three-point line, (along with) tough, contested mid-range shots as well and the free-throw line.
“Sometimes in basketball, you can do a lot of good things, but there’s still another team over there and they did a little bit better. They knocked down some shots – a lot of shots – that we didn’t knock down. And sometimes, we overcomplicate basketball and think about 100 different things. Some games, at the end of the day, the team that shoots it better wins the game. And I thought, if there’s an example of a game (like that), it’s probably tonight.”
Sykes credited his team for sticking to the script. Like Creamer, he too was concerned about his team’s focus coming into Friday night’s rematch. Those fears subsided quickly once the Tygers got rolling.
“Sometimes you don’t want to overthink it, I guess. You want to kind of stick to the script. And for us, with it still technically being early in the season for us, we’ve really been trying to focus on ourselves, and doing the things that we need to do to become a good program, and throw a few wrinkles in our gameplan specifically,” Sykes said.
“So really, it wasn’t about making adjustments or that kind of thing, it was really just us being focused on the Tygers and trying to become a better team. And that’s really been our focus over these last two or three weeks, having a late start and a slow start to our season.”
After starting its season Dec. 29 due to quarantine delays, Mansfield Senior experienced no interruptions in January. The Tygers will play eight OCC games over the next three weeks, following litmus-test non-conference matchups against Sandusky (Saturday) and Lima Senior (Tuesday).
Sykes said his team is focused on taking things one game at a time.
“We’ve been blessed and fortunate so far, because once we got started, we’ve continued to play,” he said. “We’re gonna try to do everything we can to stay safe and keep these guys playing, and hopefully we can get better and be ready to roll come tournament time.”
Mount Vernon, meanwhile, will keep chipping away at its goal of continuous progress. Coon said his team has improved over the last two months, but the next step is turning that improvement into wins.
“Hopefully we stick together, because I really do think we’re getting better, even if the result doesn’t always show that,” Coon said. “I really do think we’re getting a better understanding of how we need to play, and our execution’s getting better – obviously not perfect, but it’s getting better.
“So I’m hopeful that our kids will get rewarded (for) that getting better by some results, because at the end of the day, that’s what we’re trying to do, is win basketball games. But we’re just not quite there yet against some good teams consistently.”
Mount Vernon will head to Marysville on Saturday night before facing Marion Harding on Monday. The Yellow Jackets will return home next Friday to face the league-leading Wooster Generals.
