‘Buying in’ has turned inexperienced Mainland into a playoff team

By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
Last season, the Mainland Regional boys basketball team had expectations of competing for Cape-Atlantic League and South Jersey titles with players such as Brandon Savitch, Osun Osunniyi, John Mairone and Jack Bergman. The Mustangs won 19 games, earned a berth into the CAL Tournament, and advanced to the South Jersey Group 3 semifinals before losing to eventual champion Winslow. Coming into this season, the Stangs had five new starting players and the expectations were much less intense, but Mainland has stood toe-to-toe with the best in the CAL National and earned another state playoff berth despite its inexperience.

Coach Dan Williams says that’s because the players, led by seniors Cornelius Brozell, Duncan Scandin, Gabe Fooks-Michnya and Nick Mairone, have bought in to what he has been preaching all year — just keep working hard and getting better each quarter, and you’ll have a chance to win games. Mainland came into the second full week of February with 12 wins and was fourth in the CAL National, but could easily be leading the conference if not for close losses to Holy Spirit and Ocean City.
“Coming into the season, we were probably the most green team in the conference. Brandon and Osun carried about 80 percent of the load last year, (John) Mairone got hot toward the end of the year and Jack did a lot of the dirty work for us, and Sahmir (Jones) transferred. We were planning to do a lot with him, just sort of turning the ball over to him and hoping he could go for 18-20 points per game. We knew these other guys could defend,” Williams said. “We started 0-2, got trounced by EHT (in the season opener), and I take the blame for that, we were not ready at all. Then we lost a game against Highland (44-42) when we were leading the whole game. If we make a play or two at the end it goes the other way, but I think those two games showed some of our inexperience. We should have won that game against Highland, and I think that was the turning point in our season. Going up to that Christmas tournament (at Southern Regional) and winning three of four games — I think our guys were hoping to go 2-2 — we beat Absegami before the tournament, then won the first game of that tournament and we were back to .500. We knew we were going to take our lumps against Lenape, but then we came out and beat Notre Dame, and that might have been the other turning point. Notre Dame lost a lot from last year, but we still lost by 15 points to them last year.”
Mainland finished December a game above .500, at 4-3, and after three straight losses in early January the Mustangs closed out the month by going 4-2, including a big win at home against Pleasantville. As of Feb. 12, the Mustangs were 12-9 despite having five new starters.
“We’re going to be on the outside looking in for the CAL Tournament, but we’re two plays away — if we close out the Holy Spirit game and we lost by one in overtime to Ocean City — from leading our conference. So the guys are feeling pretty good. Our playoff draw is pretty tough, we go on the road to Toms River East, and if we’re lucky enough to win that game we would have to go up to Timber Creek, most likely, and they are one of the top teams in South Jersey. The kids know what is in front of them and it’s a great opportunity,” Williams said. “The record is a testament to these guys. The day of practice after the first game, after getting our butts kicked by EHT, they came back and had one of the best practices of the year. Nothing seems to get them too down, and maybe that’s the good thing about not really having expectations about outcomes of games. This past week was the first week that we allowed ourselves to talk about outcomes. We had been talking about doing the little things each game, not waste possessions and give maximum effort and see what that does for us in the fourth quarter, and that’s been our mantra the whole way. Last year, after the first week, and with Osun, we were talking about where we would be in the conference — I don’t know if that’s a good style of coaching, but the guys knew they had something there that was pretty special, and it was hard to deny talking about expectations.

“The first day I got the job, former coach John Evans said that whatever is the natural thing to do and say, anything less than that the kids will see right through it and you’ll come off as phony. Last year, talking about expectations was natural, but this year, the only thing that made sense was to talk about what can we do in quarter one that will have us in the game in quarter No. 2, and after that, what adjustments can we make at halftime that will have us there in the fourth quarter,” Williams added. “It’s just been a little bit of a different mental approach. We didn’t plot a course out and say we could get 20 wins this year or win the conference, the expectation every day was to get better every day and see what that did for us by the end of the week.”
Williams said the key to Mainland making the state playoffs despite such a lack of game experience has been the willingness of all the players to trust that what the coaching staff was teaching them would work if they put in the time and effort.
“That’s the thing with high school kids, we have inexperience but we also have talent, and unless you are totally devoid of talent, it’s going to be all about the buy-in,” Williams said. “If they are totally invested, you’re never really out of putting yourself in position to fight for the conference or to get a playoff spot. This year has been rewarding because we really got back to teaching the game of basketball more than anything.”
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays