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Mooney boys look to fill leadership hole

Staff photo / Greg Macafee Cardinal Mooney senior Jaxon Menough looks for an open teammate during a practice earlier this week. Menough looks to be one of the key contributors this season.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Cardinal Mooney boys basketball team will have a lot of growing up to do — both on the court and off of it — heading into the 2022-23 season.

After losing senior point guard Mick Hergenrother, who led the Cardinals in almost every statistical category and provided Cardinal Mooney with an unquestionable leader, the Cardinals will have a big hole to fill leading into the season. But the Cardinals aren’t exactly short on experience.

After an up-and-down 2021-22 season filled with tough games, the Cardinals made a deep playoff run. They took down a Springfield team that was 24-1 up until that point in the district finals and then turned around and dispatched a Campbell Memorial team that was also 24-1 up until their matchup.

At that point in the season, Cardinal Mooney coach Carey Palermo said players were starting to settle into their roles, which helped with the overall team’s growth and success.

“Guys were filling into roles during that time,” Palermo said. “Guys like Ashton O’Brien and Rocco Turner weren’t starting earlier in the year, but as they learned more and got better defensively, they became bigger players for us. So when you have your best five players on the floor, that’s going to allow you to thrive.”

Senior Jaxon Menough, who is another of the core three returners, agreed that being able to trust Turner and O’Brien late in the season really contributed to their late run.

“We started trusting in those guys because at the beginning of the season, it was a really short leash, just starting with the program,” Menough said. “But once we started to trust those guys, they were lights out. They were just great players, and we were able to have those extra players in order to go on that run. They really came into their own.”

Now, Menough, O’Brien, and Turner will be leaned on to lead the Cardinals this season. As sophomores last season, Turner and O’Brien averaged 12.8 and 7.3 points per game, respectively. Menough averaged 3.9 points per game and tallied two rebounds per game and 1.4 steals.

While they’ll be looking to take the lead on the court, Turner says what they are able to do off the court will be just as important as they look to fill in the hole that was left by Hergenrother.

“The returners definitely have to step up, but I think it starts with stepping up off the court and taking on a leadership role in general,” Turner said. “I think that will lead to the play on the court, and everything else will take care of itself. We have guys that are talented enough to do that.”

Until the Cardinals find that leadership, it will be a growing process throughout the season, which can be argued is the case each year at this point. Players from fall sports start to file in after their respective seasons are over and they start to redevelop that chemistry from a year ago.

“We’re very inexperienced. We have a lot of guys back, but we have a lot of guys stepping into new roles that aren’t very experienced at all,” Palermo said. “So when we get everyone back healthy and we get everybody back acclimated from football or golf or soccer, or whatever fall sport they were doing, we’re going to be pretty good.”

The Cardinals will lay their hat on the defensive end this season. Palermo said they’ll pressure teams with a press, they’ll play aggressive man-to-man defense and they’ll stick to what they know.

O’Brien added that if they can stick to the culture that Palermo and his staff have preached, they’ll be just fine.

“I think we just have to keep developing that culture that Coach P and the staff always preach to us. We have to be tough, gritty, diving for loose balls, and just lock down on defense,” O’Brien said. “I think that’s really what it’s going to come down to.”

The Cardinals will start their season Tuesday on the road against Liberty.

gmacafee@tribtoday.com

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