February 20, 2000

Calvert gets second lose of its season

By Dave Feltner
sports Editor

FINDLAY &emdash; Tony Mass will take this one. No questions asked.

Liberty-Benton may have handed Calvert its second loss of the season, 63-55, but Mass found out a couple things about his Senecas.

First, his team can play with the best.

Second, they don't have to rely on Joe Harvey and Dustyn Risner to do it.

Even though Calvert's top two scorers were limited to six combined points in the first half, the Senecas still found ways to give the No. 3 ranked team in Division III fits all night.

"You don't want to get too caught up in wins and losses," said Mass, whose team fell to 16-2. "Liberty-Benton is on our schedule, and has been for the past 13 years, because they play fundamental basketball, they have a beautiful facility, and they're ranked third in the state, and they deserve every bit of it.

"That's a very good team, and we battled them on their home court," he said. "I just think they ended up doing some things a little bit better than we did them."

The Senecas shot 8 of 14 from behind the 3-point arc, led by Bart Fisher who popped in 4 of his five 3-point attempts in the first half.

It got so frustrating for the Eagles, head coach Steve Williman could be heard asking his coaches during the fourth quarter, "I don't know what to run (on defense). We can't guard 'em man-to-man, and when we go zone we can't guard the three."

Williman reflected those words in his post-game thoughts.

"They're very athletic, and their athleticism caused us problems at times," the Liberty-Benton coach said. "Defensively, we struggled to stop them most of the evening. In man (defense) they broke us down on the dribble, and in zone they knocked down a number of threes. We were really struggling to find what was our best defense."

So the Eagles, who rely so much on their defense, turned to their offense to salt this one away.

Fisher's 3s and Kevin Lucius' nine points and four rebounds kept Calvert within 35-34 at halftime, but L-B found a cushion in the opening moments of the second half.

Wayne Welty, Dustin Lieb and Dave Tolford all scored unanswered to make it 41-34.

Then Risner, who sat most of the first half after two quick fouls, scored to stop the push, but L-B's Brady Hoane stuck a putback and Tolford hit a jumper in the lane to make it 45-36.

It was 53-47 to start the fourth when Hoane banged in one of his six 3s and Lieb sank a pair from the line for a 58-47 lead.

Then it was time for Williman to pull out his ace &emdash; the four corners offense.

With six minutes left in the game the Eagles played keep-a-way with the Calvert defense, holding the ball for minutes at a time.

That put the Senecas in rush mode and it showed on the stat sheet. Calvert had turned the ball over just eight times in the first three quarters, but gave it up five times in the fourth.

"We want to stay focused on the MAL because our goal is still to win that," Mass said. "But at the same time you want to get your kids focused for the tournament. And there's no better atmosphere than here to do that. They're a team like you see down the road in the tournament."

Harvey finished with 16 points to lead the Senecas. Fisher had 12, Lucius nine and Ben Brickner eight.

Hoane knocked down 24 points for the Eagles. Lieb and Tolford pitched in 12 apiece and Welty finished with 10.