Staff photo / Brian Yauger Mathews junior Jake Petak (2) celebrates after the buzzer sounds following the Mustangs’ victory over Maplewood on Tuesday.

MECCA — If his team trailed by 15 points one week ago, Mathews boys basketball coach Mike Weymer didn’t think they would walk off the court with a win.

But the Mustangs, who have operated under a mantra of “refuse to lose” reclaimed some of that spirit on Tuesday, pushing back in the fourth quarter to beat Maplewood, 50-47.

“After our loss to Bristol last week, we really did some soul searching as a program, and really tried to get back to our roots and what was important to us within the culture of our basketball family,” Weymer said. “The kids and I, we talked for over an hour one day, just trying to outline what are the things that have led to our success, and we really tried to go back and really focus on those things. That’s what you saw tonight.

“A week ago, when we get down 15, I don’t know that we make that comeback. We talked about energy, enthusiasm, never quitting, the hallmarks of teams in our program, and I was really proud of the way the kids have embraced that. It’s easy to focus on X’s and O’s, or ‘I’m not putting the ball in the hoop,’ but to really try to get back to our culture and what we do and what we believe in, I think made the difference in our program, and we saw it out there tonight.”

Cutting the deficit to 10 points going into the fourth, Mathews outscored the Rockets 17-4 in the final quarter to earn the win.

Going into the game, Weymer knew that it was going to be a test. Maplewood (6-6, 4-4 NAC) has taken its lumps over the years, but the Rockets have been a tough team to top this season.

“This is far and away the most complete Maplewood team I’ve seen in my time here,” Weymer said. “We knew our kids would be in for a dog fight. We warned them all week, prepped them for that.”

Anthony Marinkovich paced the Mustangs with 17 points, five of which coming in the fourth quarter.

“The last couple practices have been, honestly, really tough,” Marinkovich said. “I think (this game was) our pivot point. Everybody cared, we started moving the ball around more, and people really started to turn the page (on past losses). Everybody got a taste of the ball, everybody got a taste of some points, and what it felt like to be a winning team and just be a part of something great, instead of being down in a ditch. After today, all of us working together, it’s just a huge one. We just hope to snowball this one moving forward.”

Jake Petak tacked on 10 for Mathews.

Ethan Nevinski led the way for Maplewood with 13 points.

Rockets coach Marty Urchek hopes his team can use the sting of this loss to keep growing. They’ve been in close games a handful of times this season, now they need to close those games out.

“We’ve got to be able to close games out,” Urchek said. “Of our six losses now, I believe almost at least half of them by three points. We’ve been right there. We’ve got a lot of close games that we’ve got to be able to pull out, and it’s just learning how to close games out, learning how to win.”

Maplewood hosts Pymatuning Valley on Friday.

While “refusing to lose” is Mathews’ mantra, Weymer doesn’t want that focus to purely be on wins and losses. It’s what leads to wins and losses that should be the focus.

The Mustangs (5-5, 4-4 NAC) will put that to the test on Friday with Chalker.

“Sometimes when you get focused on, ‘I have to win. I have to do this,’ it’s easy to forget how you have that ‘refuse to lose’ mantra in the first place,” Weymer said. “Just getting back to, ‘We’re not going to quit, we’re going to fight every day. We’re going to fight in practice. We’re going to practice hard, we’re going to be accountable, we’re going to watch film and be ready to go.'”