Staff photo / Neel Madhavan Chaney's Asuante Mickel (1) and Allex Hill (3) lift the Division III, Northeast 4, district championship trophy, while surrounded by their teammates, after beating Nordonia on Saturday at Warren G. Harding High School.

WARREN — Junior guard Austin Brown has been around the Chaney boys basketball program for most of his life.

His father, Aundra, is an assistant coach and Brown served as a waterboy for the Cowboys when the athletics returned to the school in 2019.

This year, Brown has been Chaney’s leading scorer. And on Saturday, he scored 19 points to help lead the second-seeded Cowboys to their first district championship since 2023 with a 62-45 victory over No. 15 seed Nordonia in the Division III, Northeast 2, district final at Warren G. Harding High School.

“I’ve been around this program for a minute. It feels good to be the last district champions and bring it home,” Brown said. “Coming from a young team, we’ve all gotten older and matured. Now it’s all coming together, just finishing off the season strong, executing and finishing off games.”

For Chaney, 2025-26 has been about leaving behind a legacy in the school’s final year before it consolidates with East next fall to become Youngstown High School.

“This whole season has been about us going out great,” junior guard Asuante Mickel said. “It’s the last year at Chaney. We want to go out big and make history.”

The Cowboys are 21-3 and have wins over programs like Canfield, Harding, Howland, St. Vincent-St. Mary, Erie (Pa.), Poland and Lutheran West this season.

Now, after winning four straight district titles from 2019-23, the Cowboys are heading back to the regional semifinals.

“It’s redemption because we won four straight and we haven’t been back there in two years. So this is really special, especially since it’s going to be our last year,” Chaney head coach Marlon McGaughy said. “It’s not just for us, it’s for the whole City of Youngstown. We’re coming together as one school, so we want to unify.”

Early on, Nordonia (13-11) matched Chaney almost shot for shot in the opening quarter, even taking an 11-10 lead by the end of the period.

But in the second quarter, the Cowboys took control. Brown scored nine of his 19 points, as Chaney outscored the Knights 20-12 to take a seven-point lead into halftime, 30-23.

“We told them we gotta stay on their shooters because they shoot a lot of threes,” McGaughy said. “We called a timeout and we reset ourselves. We did a good job of that.”

In the third quarter, the Cowboys quickly pushed their lead to 12. But Jason Janosek scored nine of his team-high 16 points for the Knights to cut Chaney’s advantage down to six. By the end of the period, Chaney led 41-35.

However, that was as close as Nordonia would get, as the Cowboys dominated the fourth quarter to pull away. In addition to Brown’s 19, Mickel finished with 11 points, while Allen Hill had 10.

“(It was) our pressure and our conditioning, that’s what we’ve done all year,” McGaughy said. “We wear teams down. … That’s what we’re built for. We turn the pressure up when other teams are starting to fade.”

Chaney will face Gates Mills Hawken in the Division III regional semifinal on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Medina. The Hawks beat Ursuline 72-59 in a district final on Saturday to advance.

“We’re just going to take it one game at a time,” McGaughy said. “We play Hawken on Wednesday, and we’ll see how it goes.”