ORWELL — Consistency and execution are things all coaches look for in their teams. The Mathews Mustangs have done both to a great degree this season in rolling to the top of the Northeastern Athletic Conference race, while the Grand Valley Mustangs have had too many moments where they didn’t achieve those traits.

Coming off a big win at Pymatuning Valley earlier in the week, and playing extremely well in that game, Mathews (12-5, 8-2 in NAC) appeared to be gaining momentum for the stretch run. Something was missing for the Mathews crew, though, and a miserable first half, caused by a lack of execution on Mathews’s part and good execution defensively by Grand Valley, proved to be way too much for Mathews to overcome as GV recorded an impressive 69-45 win.

“I was really happy with our defensive efforts tonight,” GV coach Luke Strohm said. “We were able to get a lot done with our fullcourt pressure. at times. Over the last three weeks or so, we’ve worked much harder on our defensive sets and it’s finally paying off.

“We’re getting better with our footwork and fundamental positioning on defense, and being able to cut the sidelines on them tonight and set some decent traps kept them from getting the ball inside.”

Mathews coach Jason Lee agreed with that assessment, to a point.

“You have to credit Grand Valley’s kids for a great effort tonight,” he said. “At the same time, we obviously were not the same team that beat PV earlier in the week. Our execution was terrible at both ends of the floor. I think we got the ball inside twice in the first half, and in our normal game plan, that just comes down to a lack of execution.”

The first half was lackluster for both teams, offensively. Grand Valley’s A.J. Henson hit a pair of treys on his way to a 10-point first period as GV (9-5, 4-3 in NAC) took a commanding lead with a 12-0 run covering a four-minute span of the opening period. Henson scored all his points for the quarter in that run and assisted on the only bucket he didn’t score.

Meanwhile, the lack of execution offensively, contributed heavily by GV pressure, forced a 3-of-20 first-half shooting performance by Mathews. It didn’t help things any by turning the ball over 15 times, and an 0-for-eight effort from the floor in the second period, in which it did make one free throw, dug too deep a hole of which to escape.

Key to that first-half success for GV was cutting off the inside passing games of Cole O’Dell and Brandon Cetor, who both scored 20 against PV on Tuesday. This time, not being able to get the ball inside eliminated good scoring chances and they combined to make just four of 22 shots, while scoring 17 points combined. Zach Youngs did hit a trio of long-range shots in leading his team with 15 points, but only a parade to the foul  line in the second half, leading to a 23-of-33 performance, kept Mathews from being totally stomped.

“Individually, I don’t think we can match up with Grand Valley skill-wise, but if we work as a team, we can handle them,” Lee said. “It takes a team effort, though, and we just didn’t play that way tonight. It will happen from time to time, so you just go back to practice and get it all out of your system. This is a tough league, we’re still at the top, so we have a lot of work to put in yet.”

GV wasn’t so sharp in the first half, either, but when Strohm inserted Jake Vormelker into the lineup to boost his team’s rebounding, it gave it the spark to ignite the offense a little bit.

“Coach told us at halftime that we needed to pick up our rebounding more,” GV forward Stanley Sirrine said. “We got off to a slow start, but in the second half, we came out with more fire in us.”

Leading 22-9 at the intermission, a 9-4 push to start the third quarter got the GV offense jump started to full speed, and they got their transition game going in the fourth period behind Henson, Mitchell Lake and Sirrine to the tune of 12-of-18 shooting to effectively blow the game wide open.

Henson led the attack again with his 23 points and solid floor game. He added four steals and six assists to his numbers and Lake tallied 12 of his 17 points in the second half, while blocking four shots, effectively negating efforts from the visitors to establish an inside game.

Sirrine and Vormelker each tallied nine points, but after Mathews dominated the boards in the early going, Vormelker’s entrance to the game stopped that in its tracks.

“We wanted to focus on stopping Cetor from distributing the ball on the inside tonight,” Strohm said. “When Jake (Vormelker) went into the game, he played a major part in doing that. You can’t really stop Cetor and O’Dell, but we slowed them down a lot tonight.

“It was a good win for us.”

Kelly is a freelance writer from Jefferson.