Of course, one play alone cannot be the deciding factor between winning and losing, regardless of the contest or event. But during Saturday’s Mid-Central Conference basketball game at Saint Francis’ Hutzell Center, there was one particular moment that served as the definitive representation of the Cougars’ 82-75 victory over Huntington.
The time came with less than two minutes remaining in the first half, when Huntington held a three-point lead on the Cougars.
Ethan Hussey, a 6-foot-3 junior, had just missed a mid-range shot from the left side of the floor. In fact, he misfired badly enough that he sensed the errant shot before it reached the rim, chased down the rebound beneath the bucket and dribbled the ball to the right side of the floor, where he drained a three-pointer that tied the game at 37.
While Saint Francis would wait until the mid-stages of the second half to pull away from the Foresters, it was Hussey’s hustle that illustrated the win for the Cougars (14-8, 5-5 MCC).
“The telling sign for us is the fact that we got out-rebounded by 12 and gave up 14 offensive rebounds,” Huntington coach Ty Platt said. “That was the whole deal right there.”
The word Platt used later was “effort.” Saint Francis had plenty of it, and Huntington didn’t.
Coming out of a 39-39 halftime tie, the teams traded leads on four occasions. Shane Merryman’s tough reverse layup from beneath the basket gave the Foresters (13-9, 5-5) a 46-45 lead, but Saint Francis got a three-pointer from the left corner by Kevin Dawson, and then a Dawson layup off a pass from Seth Small that gave the Cougars a 50-46 lead.
Although Huntington caught up at 50-all, a 9-3 Saint Francis run in less than two minutes gave the Cougars a 59-53 lead, and the Foresters couldn’t get closer than four the rest of the way.
“We needed that,” Saint Francis coach Chad LaCross said. “Over the last few days, we’ve kind of sat down and had some meetings and talked and it felt like everybody was back to being on the same page. I thought we got away from that. We got away from playing the way we normally play in playing good basketball and getting good pressure and turning defense into offense.
“I thought we did a great job of that.”
Hussey led Saint Francis with 18 points, and Caleb Kennedy paced Huntington with 24.
