BY JUSTIN JACKSON The Dominion Post
JUSTIN JACKSON is a sports reporter for The Dominion Post. He can be reached at sports@dominionpost.com
Morgantown High boys’ basketball coach Tom Yester wanted to say it, began to say it, then changed his thoughts.
“No excuses,” he said. “Not tonight. They simply outplayed us.”
No. 7 University High earned an impressive 79-61 victory against the third-ranked Mohigans, but it came with Morgantown’s leading scorer, Marlan Robinson, lying in a Ruby Memorial Hospital bed and starting forward Elliott Law dressed in street clothes on the bench — the result of a car accident the two were in on Sunday.
What Yester may have been thinking, UHS guard Jedd Gyorko said for him.
“It’s unfortunate they couldn’t play,” Gyorko said. “They would have made a difference. We sure wanted to play against them, because you want to be able to beat your rival at their best. We want their families to know that they’re in our prayers and we’re rooting for them to get better.”
Not that Gyorko is willing to give the victory back, not when the jerseys staring you in the face say “MORGANTOWN.” In that case, you could beat the school’s chorus line and you still would relish the bragging rights.
“Definitely not giving it back,” Gyorko said. “I still think they’re a good team. I thought they played well and they played hard. It got a little rough out there, but I like rough games.
“Like I said, though, it’s rough for them. Any time you lose your leading scorer, it’s tough. I hope he can be back in time for the next game.”
The next meeting between the two schools is Feb. 10, at the MHS gymnasium. Law, who averages 5.2 points per game, will certainly be cleared to play by then. Yester said Robinson will undergo tests today and then the team will know more about his status.
Until then, the Mohigans are going to have to find a way to make it work. They had little trouble in a 40-point victory against Buckhannon-Upshur, but as the Mohigans found out Friday, UHS is no Buckhannon-Upshur.
“We tried to hang around through the third quarter,” Yester said. “What usually happens in the case of when you play a good team is, you run out of gas. We ran out of gas in the fourth quarter. We didn’t have enough firepower and they just shot the ball beautifully.
“I thought [Jeff] Lindsay and [John] Hatfield played their hearts out,” Yester said. “I thought we probably should have tried to work the ball inside more, but we didn’t do it. We didn’t shoot well. We did some things that will usually get you beat and we got beat tonight.”
Todd Flint/The Dominion Post University’s Ryan Nehlen tries to swat the ball away from Morgantown John Hatfield. L.C. Jefferson (25) and Grant Meadows stand by.