The seniors continued their three-year unbeaten home mark by downing sixth-seeded West Branch, 73-41, on Thursday night in a Division II district semifinal.

Chaney (11-6) will play at second-seeded Poland in a district final at 4 p.m. Saturday.

“That’s a pretty good run, but we think we’ll be ready to go on the road,” Chaney coach Marion McGaughy said. “Our schedule is built for this. A lot of teams looked over us (for seeding) because of our record, but they didn’t understand that we played the top five teams in the state in Division I and we were in every game.

“We’re going to play anybody that wants to play us. I hear a lot of coaches say they’ll play anyone, anytime, but they don’t back it up. We went out there and did it, but we’re still struggling to schedule games next year. Nobody seems to want to play us.”

Staff photo / Brad Emerine Chaney’s Quincy Jones prepares to use a screen set by teammate Jason Hewlett during the Cowboys’ 73-41 win over West Branch in a Division II district semifinal Thursday night in Youngstown.

Anyone watching film or scouting this district semifinal wouldn’t likely want to play the Cowboys either.

With a nice blend of quickness, size and perimeter shooting combined with tenacious defense, it’s no secret why.

Guard Cameron Lawrence sliced through the West Branch defense for 11 points and five assists and 6-foot-6 post Clive Wilson scored 10 points and combined with 6-5 Quincy Jones to clog lanes and produce a sizable rebounding advantage. Jones added 16 points. Sharp-shooting Sharrod Taylor made a trio of 3-pointers and finished with 18 points, and Josiah Gonzalez came off the bench and netted 12 points on an assortment of drives to the basket.

“Clive is a big boy for us and he’s a football player who is just learning how to play,” McGaughy said. “This is just his second year ever with basketball. He’s learning and picking things up pretty well. Once he knows everything that’s going on in the game, he’s going to be really special for us. I think he’s really going to take off next year as a senior.

“We’ve got guards who love to penetrate, find the gaps and either score, kick it out to Sharrod or dump it to the low block to our bigs. Then there’s Quincy, an all-around player and good, young man. He gets good grades and he doesn’t talk much. We try to get him to open up some, but I’ll tell you what, he comes to play every night and is consistent and does a lot of things for us.”

The Warriors (18-7) matched the early intensity as the score was 7-all before the hosts closed the quarter on a 12-0 run that was fueled by seven points from Jones.

“Early on, the game was tied at 7 and we were executing pretty well,” West Branch coach Michael Brown said. “We thought it was really important to come out to a quick start because we knew how good they were. We did.

“What didn’t show on film (of Chaney) was their size inside. On film, they’re playing teams like (Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary, Lyndhurst Brush, Massillon Jackson, Mentor and Medina) and that size doesn’t show on film. It proved to be challenging in there. Their rebounding pulled us out of a zone, which has been a cornerstone for us all year. We had to go to man (defense) and we boxed out better, but we couldn’t match up (with their speed).”

That late first-quarter spurt was part of a 26-0 overall run as the Cowboys scored the first 14 points of the second period for a 33-7 cushion. Taylor made all three of his 3-pointers in that stretch and Wilson provided a slam dunk.

“We do a lot of pressing hard-core man-to-man and I think that took them out of their game somewhat,” McGaughy said. “I don’t think they were used to our speed.”

The Warriors played a strong third period and trailed 60-34 going into the fourth quarter.

“Hats off to our seniors,” Brown said. “I don’t think our seniors quit one time. In a game like this when a lot of adversity strikes on the road, it’s be easy to show bad body language. Our guys showed a lot of maturity. They kept working for four quarters. That’s what they’ve done all year. It’s the reason this team got to 18 wins. These seniors deserve everything they got out of this year. That shows their mentality. I couldn’t be more proud of our six seniors.”

Dru DeShields scored 18 points for West Branch and Jaxon Hendershott added 10 points.

“From Canton to Youngstown, you’ll find really good competition in every division,” Brown said. “Struthers is undefeated and this (Chaney) team was a 3-seed. I mean, a 3-seed? It shows you how good our district really is.”