MANSFIELD — He doesn’t wear a cape or leap tall buildings in a single bound, but ‘Super Chunk’ was the hero Mansfield Senior needed Friday night.
Nathaniel ‘Chunky’ Haney scored nine of his 14 points in the fourth quarter and overtime as the Tygers upset Lexington 54-53 in the regular season finale at Pete Henry Gym.
Senior High (15-7, 11-3 Ohio Cardinal Conference) closed the regular season with four consecutive victories and prevented Lexington from winning the OCC title outright. The Minutemen (18-4, 12-2) shared the crown with conference newcomer New Philadelphia.
Nicknamed ‘Chunky’ by his grandmother and ‘Super Chunk’ by one of his first youth basketball coaches, Haney scored seven of Senior High’s 10 points in overtime. He opened the four-minute extra session with a 3-pointer and added a layup two minutes later before icing it with a pair of free throws with 3.5 seconds left.
“He’s had the nickname ‘Super Chunk’ for years. As a little fella at the Friendly House we called him ‘Super Chunk,’ ” Senior High coach Marquis Sykes said of Haney, one of two seniors feted on Senior Night. “He became ‘Super Chunk’ tonight, especially in overtime. He made some huge plays for us.”
It didn’t look like overtime would be necessary when Haney knocked down an elbow jumper with eight seconds remaining in regulation to give the Tygers a 44-42 lead.
But Lexington freshman Joe Caudill forced OT when he collected an offensive rebound and scored on a difficult reverse layup as time expired to knot the score at 44-44.
It was all Haney after that.
His corner 3-pointer off the tip gave the Tygers a 47-44 lead with 3:52 to play and his layup in traffic pushed Senior High’s advantage to 49-46 with 1:49 remaining.
“I wanted that ball bad in the corner. I saw a little bit of space, enough space to get the shot off, and I was sitting there waiting patiently to get that shot up,” Haney said of the overtime triple. “No matter what I was going to shoot that ball.”
A pair of Kyevi Roane free throws made it 51-46 with 1:02 to play, but a layup by Baden Forup and an offensive rebound and putback by Elijah Hudson made it 51-50 with 17 seconds left.
Roane split a pair of freebies with 14.2 seconds showing to make it 52-50 and as the Minutemen pushed the ball up the floor, Baden Forup was whistled for his fifth foul for an illegal screen. Haney, who was knocked to the floor on the play, cooly knocked down both free throws with 3.5 seconds remaining to give the Tygers a 54-50 lead. Lexington’s Alex Depperschmidt hit a meaningless mid-court 3-pointer as time expired to make it 54-53, sending the partisan near-capacity crowd into a frenzy.
“(Scoring first in overtime) takes a lot of pressure off and puts a lot if pressure on the other team,” Haney said. “Especially with a 3. That made them rush and take a bad shot and we got the ball back and controlled the pace.”
Mansfield Senior was in control most of the night. The Tygers led 11-6 after the first quarter and 21-12 at the half.
“That was huge for us,” Sykes said of Senior High’s first-half defensive effort. “We mixed up our defenses a little bit … just to kind of keep them off-balance.
“That first half was definitely the difference.”
Lexington, which already was playing without A.J. Young and Gavin Husty, lost Hudson Moore to a hip injury in the first half. Moore returned briefly in the third quarter, but was lifted almost immediately and sat out the rest of the game.
“It was just one of those deals where we were not going to risk it,” Lex coach Scott Hamilton said. “He wanted to go and said he could give me what he had, but we weren’t going to mess with it.”
Roane matched Haney with 14 points. Karion Lindsay and Ja’Ontay O’Bryant each had nine.
For Lexington, freshman Brayden Fogle led the way with 19 points. Forup added 15 and Hudson had 11.
Both teams begin tournament play next week. Senior High takes on Norwalk at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 22 at Bucyrus. Lex will play either Willard or Galion at 8 p.m. Feb. 24 at Madison.
