Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes Boardman’s Demarr Clark has a shot blocked by Canfield’s Jake Schneider during the first half of their matchup Tuesday evening. Canfield won 49-34, recording its first victory over the Spartans since 2018.

BOARDMAN — Some Canfield players will admit that the “2013” under the conference title banner at their gymnasium is a daily reminder of what their objective is — to win an All-American Conference for the first time in a decade.

A huge step was taken toward that goal Tuesday evening, as Canfield gallivanted six or so miles down 224 to claim victory at Boardman by a final of 49-34.

It was the Cardinals’ first win over the Spartans since January 30th, 2018, snapping an eight-game skid against their AAC foe.

“We wanted to respect them, but not fear them, that’s the main thing because they have waxed us four years in a row by a lot every game,” Canfield coach John Cullen said. “The main thing is that you have to break their pressure because they’re used to getting a lot of easy points on the press.”

Canfield (8-3) led 4-0 early, not allowing Boardman (4-7) to score until Kaden Mayhew hit a free throw at the 3:27 mark in the first. The Cardinals held the Spartans to only two field goals during the opening eight minutes of the contest.

Coming out of the gate with clean and effective defense set the tone early for Canfield.

“In our coach’s talking point, it’s defense, our other coach is defense, and our head coach is defense, so if we’re playing good defense we can get run outs and get some scores,” said junior Tony Russo. “It almost demoralizes the other team because they’re not getting their shots and they’re not hitting their shots, so they don’t want to play defense, they just want to be on offense. That allows us to run our offense smoother, it’s just free buckets at that point.”

Leading 15-12 following a make by junior Dom Cruz, Canfield ended its second quarter on a 12-2 run to take a 27-14 edge into the locker room following some clean makes by Drew Shapiro.

That’s not to say that Boardman wasn’t ready to lie down, however. Demarr Clark made some nice moves toward the rim, scoring a pair of quick buckets, with an added make by Terrell McDowell to cap off a 6-0 run.

Clawing and fighting back, the Spartans found themselves within seven following a three-pointer on the right side of the arc by David D’Altorio. Cruz quickly buried a three-pointer himself, scoring again moments later to punch back and extend Canfield’s lead.

Three-point shots by juniors Sam Castronova and Russo opened the contest back up, and helped the Cardinals find the confidence boost they needed.

Cruz led Canfield in scoring with 10 points.

“It took a little while, but the only way to make a shot is to keep shooting, even if you’re in a slump,” said Cruz. “Coach called a quick timeout (during the Boardman run), we brought it together, regrouped, and calmed down.”

All of the current Cardinal players were in junior high the last time their school took down Boardman at the varsity level. Wins are nice, but Tuesday evening meant a little more.

“We came out with a little bit of a different mentality today, we really wanted this one and we got it,” Cruz said. “We talked about it all week, big game, it means a lot to our program just as much as Poland does, maybe even more, so it was big for us.”

Russo tallied nine points, junior Jake Schneider added eight.

Boardman was paced by Brady DePietro’s eight points and Mayhew’s seven.

Following the contest, Spartans coach Pat Birch appreciated the fight his team displayed, especially early in the third.

“We challenged our guys at halftime to show some life, that first half was pretty unexplainable in terms of going through the motions and not having a lot of passion and energy for the game,” Birch said. “We’re built on playing hard and playing unselfish, that’s something we preached for a long time around here and I didn’t feel like we did that at all during the first half.

“I think we had it down to (seven), they made a couple of shots, back up to 13 pretty quick and just felt it took all the air out of us and I don’t know if there was much air in there to begin with tonight. I don’t really have a good reason for that. We had a pretty disappointing loss on Friday that probably carried over into today and that’s a sign of maturity and stuff that we have to address.”