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PV squeaks by Mathews

Staff photo / Brian Yauger — Pymatuning Valley’s Noah Wilkerson soars ahead of the Mathews defense in Tuesday’s 79-78 win in Vienna.

VIENNA — In college sports, the Mid-American Conference provides its fans with “MACtion.” On Tuesday night, the Northeast Athletic Conference provided the packed Mathews gym with “NACtion” as Pymatuning Valley beat the Mustangs in a thrilling 79-78 contest.

After the game, Lakers coach Ryan Shontz was relieved, mainly because he had dinner on the mind and was ready to eat.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Shontz said. “That was a long night. It’s Taco Tuesday, I’m late for dinner.”

Pymatuning Valley built out several leads over the course of the game but were never able to hold it as the Mustangs repeatedly battled back. At one point early in the second half, Mathews went down by nearly 20, but by the end of the third quarter were able to cut the deficit back down to five.

Mathews has a very young roster. Three of the five starters are sophomores and there’s only one senior in Tyler Roscoe. Mustangs coach Mike Weymer expects bumps in the road like this as his players are still new to the varsity level.

Staff photo / Brian Yauger — Mathews’ Vinny Sharp drives. He had a team-high 24 points.

“I’m really proud of our kids,” Weymer said. “They’re still learning how to win games at the varsity level. We’ve lost four games, three of which we had the lead in the fourth quarter and then tonight. That’s a tough pill to swallow. I hope that we’re learning along the way.”

Mathews (7-4, 4-2 NAC) fell behind again in the fourth quarter and with 3 minutes remaining in the game, it seemed Pymatuning Valley had finally taken control.

That changed however when a misunderstanding between Weymer and an official which negated a Vinny Sharp basket after a steal.

Weymer was lobbying for a 10-second violation on the prior Mathews basket, but due to the crowd noise, the official heard ‘timeout’ and stopped the game.

That incident lit a fire under the team as they were able to rally back. In the fourth quarter, Mathews scored 27 points which is more than they scored in the first half. The team’s two leading scorers Sharp (24 points) and Roscoe (20 points) scored 35 of their 44 points in the second half.

Weymer thinks that sense of urgency could have been the difference maker.

“If we played with that sense of urgency in the first half, I think things might have been a little different,” he said.

Both Noah Wilkerson and his brother Jonah each scored 12 points. Leading the team was Mason Inman who scored 24 points and Robert Verba who followed behind with 18.

Noah Wilkerson made his biggest impact on the other side of the ball. Wilkerson made a defensive stop with 25 seconds remaining that swung momentum back in favor of the Lakers. Even though that play effectively sealed the game, Shontz wanted to be sure his team kept their cool.

“We try to keep our composure the whole game,” Shontz said. “We have a lot of veteran leadership out there that have been through this kind of stuff. I wasn’t worried, I knew they would make a play when they needed to.”

As time expired the Mustangs threw one last shot up that went in, but were still one point shy of tying the game.

Mathews look to rebound with a road contest with Chalker, while Pymatuning Valley (9-2, 4-1) returns home to host Badger. In years past, Badger has been able to give the Lakers a loss each season, so Shontz has a goal to make sure that doesn’t happen this time around.

“That’s a big rivalry game for us, it’s always neck-and-neck,” Shontz said. “It seems like they get us once every year so this year we’re going to try and clean them out.”

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