MEDINA, Ohio — A first-quarter shutout helped propel Medina past Greater Cleveland Conference rival Brunswick, 64-41, on Friday to keep the Bees atop the conference.
The Bees (15-3, 10-2 GCC), ranked No. 14 in the clevleand.com Top 25, started the game on a 10-0 run and shut out the No. 18 Blue Devils (13-6, 7-4) for the first 8:28 of the game.
“We know how good they are offensively at running sets,” Medina coach Chris Hassinger said. “(Brunswick) coach (Joe) Mackey does a great job of game planning. We knew it was going to be a chess match tonight. So we knew we were going to have to play defense, something we haven’t done much of this first part of the season.”
Jackson Sartain led Medina with 16 points, 14 in the fourth quarter. Luke Schaefer added 13 points and a team-high six rebounds.
The Bees never trailed. Brunswick cut the deficit to two points in the second quarter before Medina ended the half on a 9-2 run.
Medina didn’t make a 3-pointer until the fourth quarter. Until then, Schaefer and the Bees did their damage in the paint, attacking Brunswick’s interior defense.
“I feel like across the board, we’re a little bit bigger than them,” Schaefer said. “Sometimes, we go bigger with Jimmy Daw and Sam McKee. Sometimes when we get that mismatch, we’ve got to go inside and get the easy bucket.”
Sam McKee shows off the arm with the long outlet to Jimmy Daw for @medinaathletics. #neovarsity pic.twitter.com/dclyBi7Pi5
— Tim Bielik (@bielik_tim) February 4, 2017
The Bees opened the third and fourth quarters with big runs. They used a 10-2 run to start the second half, and Sartain had 14 straight points to put the game away in the fourth. He hit all four of his 3-pointers in the run.
“In the first half, they were kind of face-guarding me. It was way harder for me to get open,” Sartain said. “The second half, they switched to a press and they left gaps. I just took advantage of them.”
Kyle Goessler led Brunswick with 18 points. Keith Simmons, who had six points, was the only other Brunswick player to make more than one field goal.
“That’s the best they’ve played us probably in the last six, seven years on that end of the floor,” Mackey said. “Give them credit. They took Keith’s driving lanes away and they gave some of our other guys some perimeter shots. Like I said, it wasn’t that we didn’t have any good shots in the first half. We just couldn’t make any.”
Medina hosts No. 5 Garfield Heights on Saturday, and Brunswick hosts Strongsville on Feb. 10.
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