WINCHESTER | Mason County's hustle and effort, a strong point much of the season, lacked its usual punch Friday night at George Rogers Clark. Royals coach Chris O'Hearn is hoping his team got that out of its system in a 59-44 loss to the Cardinals.
"We've gotta get tougher (and) we've gotta get better at rebounding the basketball," O'Hearn said. "We gave up way too many offensive rebounds, and the loose balls, it seemed like to me a lot of the offensive rebounds we gave up, we were in position, but we got outworked."
Clark's Bopper Stenzel scored a game-high 24 points and 12 in the first quarter, draining four 3-pointers overall. Big man Adam Fatkin, despite not being sharp with his finishes around the basket early, kept at it and collected 16 points -- 10 after halftime -- and seven rebounds.
Tyler Black paced the Royals with 20 points, with a significant chunk of them coming off jumpers. His usual running mates in the post and two pleasant surprises for Mason most of the season, Shawn Johnson and Steven Chambers, were held to two and zero points, respectively.
The Cardinals didn't have any one extended dominant stretch that Mason couldn't counter until the fourth quarter, when they were already up double digits. Instead they pulled away as they dominated hustle plays and executed their offense while making it difficult for the Royals to do the same thing.
"I felt like early on and even in the third quarter while the score was close, Black was just making some great individual plays, and they really weren't in a great flow offensively," Clark coach Scott Humphrey said. "We were takin' 'em out of it. When a team's doing that, eventually a dry run's gonna come."
Stenzel dominated play early, sinking two of his 3s in the first three minutes and doing a pretty good impression of older brother Robbie, whose three first-period treys sparked Clark in its 10th Region tournament final defeat of Pendleton County last year. The younger Stenzel also made back-to-back steals and transition layups in the first quarter.
Fatkin scored down low to close the first period, Charlie Rogers hit a bucket on the first possession of the second frame, and Stenzel hit his third trey at the 6:35 mark to forge Clark ahead 22-11.
The Cardinals' double-digit lead was cut to five when the Royals scored the final six points of the half. Tanner Walton hit a runner before Black turned a Johnson block into a basket, then followed his own miss in transition at the buzzer to bring Mason to within 30-25 at the half.
Clark simply outdistanced the visitors from that point on, and that can be attributed mostly to Fatkin. Humphrey also pointed to Malachi Israel's trey with five seconds left in the third quarter, which put the Cardinals ahead 47-36, as one of the key plays of the game, along with Rogers sliding to secure a loose ball as Humphrey was granted a timeout, allowing Clark to retain a possession.
The Cardinals then put together an 8-1 spurt to begin the fourth period that turned that 11-point edge into a forbidding 18. Fatkin turned Taylor Howard's offensive board into a bucket before Mason's Connor Osborne hit a free throw.
Stenzel drove baseline for two, Rogers' steal led to a Howard transition layup, and Dominic VanCleve's theft set up another Stenzel layup for a 55-37 edge with 5:50 left.
That stretch highlighted two factors O'Hearn wasn't happy with -- ball security and effort.
"Give them credit," he said. "They outplayed us tonight, obviously, and I felt like they outworked us ... I hope we're gonna learn that we've gotta take care of the basketball better, and we've got to run some offense."
Clark, ranked 10th in the state by the Associated Press, had dropped two of its previous four games after winning 17 straight. As tournament time approaches, Humphrey would like to see his charges get back to consistent play.
"We've played a ton of close games," he said. "I have a lot of confidence in our kids in close games, with their maturity, their focus, their execution and with how they handle things, but we've gotta do a better job of being more consistent."
Friday's loss was Mason's fourth game in eight days. Now the Royals are off until next Friday, when they travel to Harrison County.
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