By Noah Dalton
ELLETTSVILLE — After a slow night offensively, Mitchell High School fell in defeat to Edgewood 51-26 on Friday, as the Mustangs prevailed to cap off their Senior Night celebration.
The Bluejackets’ 26-point total was the team’s lowest scoring output of the season, with their struggles largely stemming from an off-night shooting the ball.
For the night, Mitchell shot just 25% from the field and 12% from beyond the three-point line.
Bluejackets head coach Clint Roesler noted the team’s struggles in that department over their previous three games, all of which were also losses, as factors in those results as well.
Their shooting issues have allowed other teams to adjust their strategy defensively, focusing more on cutting off scoring inside, where Mitchell’s top-scorers, Kaden Mullis and Gavin Robinson have had most of their success this season.
“You’ve got to be able to knock down shots, and we’re just not. I looked in the last three or four games, we were 6/40 for three,” he said.
“If you’re not hitting a three-point shot, it allows them to pack the paint on us, which they did, which makes [Kaden] Mullis and [Gavin] Robinson struggle because they’re packing the paint. Now we don’t trust to kick it out because we’re not hitting anything. It’s just a snowball effect,” he continued.
After a tightly contest first half, the Mustangs began to take control in the third quarter, outscoring the Bluejackets by seven in the period to take a 14-point lead.
The held Mitchell to just four points in the third, and nine points total in the second half on their way to a decisive win.
Roesler said the team’s performance defensively in the first half helped to get them in the game despite the slow start offensively. Specifically, he pointed to the team’s defending of the Edgewood’s shooters, as well as standout scorer Caleb Jones.
“Defensively I thought we did a good job in the first half of containing [Caleb] Jones, he’s a nice player, and they shoot the ball pretty well as a team, so we wanted to make sure to run them off the line. I thought we did a really good job of denying the post,” he said.
Eventually though, Mitchell’s shooting struggles caught up to them.
“As soon as they hit a few shots, they slowly started to pull away, and we panicked a little bit, and some of the shots that didn’t go in for us were really good looks,” said Roesler.
“That led to them kind of getting on a roll, and we just started to panic, and slowly everything snowballed, and now we’re not rebounding. We’re not defending actions that we defended in the first half just fine,” he continued.
Robinson finished the night with 14 points to lead the Bluejackets. Also scoring for Mitchell were Mullis (5), Jayden Zapeda (3), Kelan Endris (2) and Parker Felton (2).
Jones was Edgewood’s leading scorer, also finishing with 14 points. Behind him were Karson Gladhill (8) and Luke Druckrey (7).
Next, the Bluejackets will play the final of five consecutive games on the road, traveling to Linton to take on the Miners, the 8th ranked team in Indiana’s 2A division.
Linton, coming off a run to the semi-state round of last year’s state championship tournament with much of their roster returning, would appear to be one of the tougher matchups on Mitchell’s schedule.
Roesler will be looking for his team to bounce back from consecutive losses with a strong performance on Saturday as they near the end of the regular season, with just two games remaining.
“I want to see us fight. I have faith in our guys that we’re going to do that. We’ve got to regroup.
We’ve got to refocus. We’ve got to come together, and we’ll do what we can tomorrow to do that and be ready for the game,” said Roesler.
“We’ll come in and scout just like we usually do, do a walkthrough, get some shooting in, and I’m confident that we’ll be ready to go.”
