Malvern High School boys basketball stays unbeaten, advances to OHSAA regional final

ATHENS — The sunrise of a Sweet 16 awakened a sense of history felt to the core as Malvern High School boys basketball advanced to the Elite Eight.

Comb the archives and find Mount Rushmores of figures, amidst which Malvern junior Rodney Smith provided a fresh glow as he played the game of his life Wednesday night to help subdue McDermott Northwest 58-52 in a Division III district boys basketball semifinal.

Certainly Malvern's record, 27-0 heading into Saturday's 1 p.m. regional championship game against Harvest Prep, will go down as a sweet slice of school history.

As for "history, history" ...

Behold Sedalia Midway's Dick Bogenrife scored a volume of points in a 1953 game against Canaan one almost would expect to find in the book of Genesis: 120.

There are Jon Diebler, LeBron James, Jerry Lucas, Bob Huggins and Jim Jackson scoring not just 1,000 points in careers, but well past 2,000.

Here find Marlington's Luke "The Seven-Foot Duke" Witte with almost 500 rebounds in the 1968-69 season. There find Dennis Tucci with 19 assists in a single 1974 game.

Yes, that Dennis Tucci. The Malvern head coach shows up in the OHSAA books for 19 assists in a 1974 game. His son Tyler is on there for career assists, a bit behind Jake Diebler (yes, that Jake Diebler).

So there you have it, a Tucci legacy for hitting the open teammate. Doing just that helped the Hornets survive many tense moments and labor past Northwest (23-4).

Malvern worked the ball around nicely from the start, taking advantage of Northwest's defensive directive to pester guard J'Allen Barrino, who was named a finalist for Ohio Mr. Basketball earlier Wednesday.

"When we put help on Barrino, he got the ball to someone else in an advantageous position," said Northwest head coach Rick Scarberry. "The big guy can knock down the 3, and he had just enough time to do it the way we were playing (Barrino)."

The big guy is 6-foot-5 senior Mitchell Minor, who hit three 3s in a row after Northwest took an early 7-2 lead.

Six-foot-3 senior Dylan Phillips was pretty big, too, hitting a few clutch 3s en route to 13 points.

"I was so proud of Mitch for hitting those early 3s,," Tucci said. "Those shots gave us a lift. Then Dylan hit big 3s in the second half. That's the definition of team."

After Barrino got in foul trouble, Smith asserted himself with clutch layup after clutch layup while forcing turnovers down the stretch.

"We ran plays for him early in the game because we knew he was going to give somebody on their team a tough matchup, because everybody's focused on J'Allen and Mitch," Tucci said. "Rodney was ready. He's a gamer. He's been around it all his life. He showed it on both levels tonight."

The game was at Ohio University, whose men's team is in Cleveland for a Thursday game in the Mid-American Conference Tournament. Ohio's head coach is Jeff Boals, who played high school ball for a Malvern, neighbor, Sandy Valley.

"It's the first time we've been down here at OU," Phillips said. "It was tense ... very tense."

It was 162 miles from home for the Hornets. Northwest came from the opposite direction, from the Portsmouth area near the Ohio River. Northwest, appearing in its first Sweet 16,  is 95 miles east of Cincinnati, 80 miles southwest of Athens, and 229 miles from Malvern.

Tucci's take on his halftime message:

"I simply asked them, 'Who's the better team? I'm not out there. I don't know for sure."

His Hornets provided the answer he wanted.

The teams clawed through two tense quarters, tied at 21-21 after one and 31-31 after two.

"They hung with us, and it was a little aggravating, but we stayed calm," Smith said. "After we were tied at halftime coach said we've got to come out with confidence and play as a team."

Malvern shot much better than in the district finals against Martins Ferry, but didn't generate nearly the steals and transition points early on.

Smith slashed and scored 11 first-half points, including a 3-point play providing an early 19-13 lead.

Northwest passed cleanly in a half-court offense with the aim of finding 6-2 Connor Lintz (30 points) and 6-3 Tanner Bolin (15), both four-year starters. They had 27 of the Mohawks' 31 first-half points.

Barrino, Inter-Valley Conference North Division Player of the Year, entered the second half with three fouls, a very nervous situation this far along in the tournament. It got more nervous when Barrino was called for his fourth foul and went to the bench with midway through the third quarter.

"We have guys who can play if any of us aren't on the floor," Minor said. "Guys came in and did a great job."

The Hornets were close on assorted occasions to pulling away. Nagging little errors kept cropping up.

Barrino returned with five minutes left and quickly worked for a layup that made it 47-43. Bolin hit a 15-footer to make it 47-45, but Barrino drove and scored to make it 49-45.

"We fought and stayed close, but once Malvern gets the lead, it's trouble," Scarberry said. "They're 27-0 for a reason. They have so many strong points, size, shooting, defense, athleticism, coaching.

"I'm disappointed we lost. I can't be disappointed with my kids."

With about a minute left, Northwest missed a shot that could have made it 57-54. Malvern played "keep away, come foul me," taking open layups as available. Smith hit two of those and made two late steals.

As the clock his triple zeroes, Malvern's student section behind the basket jumped around in full-throated appreciation of, not history, but current events.

In the nightcap of a doubleheader, Harvest Prep blew out North Adams 78-48. Making history gets tougher as it goes.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Rodney Smith leads unbeaten Malvern boys basketball to regional win