The McDonald Blue Devils and Springfield Tigers have long fielded outstanding basketball teams.  Friday night the two schools played a hard-fought battle with the Tigers pulling out an 87-71 victory.  With the win, the Tigers improve to 4-0 on the season, 2-0 in the MVAC.  The Blue Devils fall to 0-2 on the season, 0-2 in the league.

“When you play McDonald you really don’t have a choice,” Tigers coach Steve French said of the fast-paced, up-tempo game.  “We don’t mind.  We play fast as well.  We want to play as fast as we are comfortable.”

“To start 4-0 is really big for us,” Tigers junior Drew Clark said of the victory.  “They (McDonald) have always been one of the top teams with 20 wins in 8 of their past 10 years so we knew we had to get this win.  We know (now) that we can hang with the top (teams)”

“This is the second game of the season and we start two sophomores,” Blue Devils coach Jeff Rasile explained.  “We have two kids returning from last year in Zach and Josh, so there is a learning experience.”

The two teams battled back and forth for two and half quarter until the Tigers started to take charge of the game late in the third stanza.  With the game tied at 45-45 at the 5:14 mark, the Tigers went on a 15-6 run with Evan Ohlin connecting on two free throws with 1:06 remaining in the frame to give them a 60-51 lead.  Tigers Drew Clark and Ohlin connected on three shots from behind the arc to propel the run.

“In the second quarter, they hit four three’s in a row from the wing and we didn’t guard one of them.  That happens with young kids,” coach Rasile explained the critical points of the game.  “The second critical point was the mid-third quarter when we went cold.  That was the difference in the game.”

The Tigers continued to keep the Devils from getting any closer than 5 points in the final period with a little over four minutes remaining in the contest.  The Tigers would close the game with a 15-6 run to make the final score appear larger than the competitiveness of the contest on a whole.  Ohlin, Clark and Clay Medvec hit 11 of 12 free throws in the last period to help clinch the game.

That combination of Ohlin, Medvec and Clark combined to score 70 of the Tigers 87 points with Clark collecting 27 with 13 rebounds, while Ohlin had 22 with 5 caroms, and Medvec scoring 21.  Clark hit on 6 of 10 shots from behind the arc while Medvec connected on 4 three’s in the game.  Shane Enyon also scored in double-digits as he tallied 11 while also blocking several key Blue Devils shots.

“We have plenty of guys who can score,” French said of his top trio of players.  “Any of them can have 20 any night and three of them did tonight.  We had great balance and that’s how we want to play.  We want to play fast and shoot the three.”

Neither team was able to separate themselves in the first half as the Blue Devils held a slim 21-19 at the end of the first quarter.  They closed the first period with a 12-5 run courtesy of several steals and uncontested layups by the Devils Zach Rasile and Josh Celli.  The teams continued to battle in a see-saw affair in the second quarter with the Devils holding a 1-point 40-39 lead.

“We weren’t attacking enough in their zone.  We were throwing too many sideways and backward passes,” French said of the early turnovers that the Devils converted into points.  “Once we started going north and south a little more, and going downhill it cut down on the turnovers.”

“We wanted to push the pace, but be under control so that we wouldn’t commit the turnovers,” Tigers junior Evan Ohlin said about the start of the game.  “But that didn’t really happen.  They were pushing the tempo more than we really wanted to because it took us out of our comfort zone.  But we started to slow down a little bit and gather ourselves and ended up with the win.”

The loss overshadowed a tremendous performance by the Blue Devils Zach Rasile who scored a game-high 41 points while Celli added 14 points to help power the Devils performance.  Rasile would hit on 3 three-pointers in the game while Jake Portolese added 1.

The Tigers return to action Tuesday night when they host the Sebring Trojans.  The Blue Devils will host the Jackson-Milton Blue Jays Tuesday night.