LEXINGTON — Elijah Hudson played the game of his life Saturday night.
The lone senior on Lexington’s roster, Hudson scored a career-high 26 points, grabbed 12 rebounds, handed out three assists and blocked three shots as the Minutemen took control of the chase for the Ohio Cardinal Conference championship with an 83-56 win over Mansfield Senior.
The Minutemen (15-1, 9-0) completed the season sweep and opened a two-game lead in the OCC over the second-place Tygers (10-3, 7-2). Lex beat Senior High 70-45 early in the season at Pete Henry Gym.
A 6-foot-8 swingman, Hudson connected on 12-of-20 shots. He dropped six points in the second quarter as Lex outscored the Tygers 16-5 in the period to open a 32-17 halftime advantage.
“In warm-ups today my shot felt better than on other days,” Hudson said. “So I just kept shooting and it worked out for me in the end.”
The Tygers trailed 16-12 after the first quarter, but cut Lex’s lead to 16-15 on a D.J. Corbin layup less than a minute into the second.
Lex responded with a 16-2 run to close the first half. Hudson put the exclamation point on the run with a dunk with 54 seconds remaining in the period.
“We did some nice things in the second quarter,” Lexington coach Scott Hamilton said. “Then we came out in the third quarter and they take a nice little run to start it.”
Senior High opened the third quarter with an 11-4 burst to cut Lex’s lead to 36-28 on a Kyevi Roane 3-pointer with 5:46 to play. Lex again had an answer, closing the period with a 26-14 spree to gain command for good.
“I think we scored 30 in the third, but we gave up 25,” Hamilton said. “That’s one of those things where you get into transition and score some buckets, you just don’t get back quick enough.”
Lexington shot 58 percent from the floor and outrebounded Mansfield Senior 48-27. The Minutemen swiped 13 offensive rebounds, leading to a 16-5 advantage in second-chance points.
“We didn’t do anything tonight that we worked on all week long,” Senior High assistant coach Nathon Loney said. “That’s the saddest part of the night. Everything we worked on all week long didn’t translate.”
The Tygers had their nine-game winning streak snapped. Senior High’s last loss was to Lexington.
“We’ve been playing really good basketball and then we come here and … if we had played like this we would be maybe .500,” Loney said. “There’s a lot of games we probably wouldn’t have won if we had played like this.”
Meanwhile, Lex was coming off its first loss. The Minutemen fell to Gahanna Lincoln 56-46 at the Battle of the 614 Showcase at Ohio Dominican last Sunday.
“We played a very good team and I thought we played very well,” Hamilton said of the loss. “We played well enough to win for three quarters and a few minutes and we just couldn’t finish it out down there.
“I think they were chomping at the bit to get back on the floor. It was a loss but we played well enough to win.”
Seven Allen backed Hudson with 14 points and added eight assists for Lex. Joe Caudill and Dantrell Hughes each had eight.
Roane scored a game-high 27 points for the Tygers. D.J. Corbin added nine, while Rashad Reed Jr. and Karion Lindsay had seven points apiece.