By Mason Reilly

The Mount Vernon Mustangs fought valiantly against the Grinnell Tigers, Feb. 16,  but lost 67-51 to the Tigers.   

The top scorer for the Mustangs was senior Austin Ash with a total of 25 points. Ash  snatched five steals, scoring on two of them. With all the accomplishments of Ash the Mustangs were outplayed  because of the break in defensive coordination of the Mustangs. “Not guarding Sam Allen put the game in Grinnell’s hands,” said Ash. Sam Allen Put 35 pts on the board and scored 10 out of the 12 three pointers he shot.

The first half of the game was rough to the Mustangs, who were down 41-29, the Mustangs didn’t have a coordinated defense which made them lag behind. The second half of the game the Mustangs caught up a little bit because of the focus to guard the Tigers best players. Ash also stole the Tigers ball and scored twice. This however didn’t make the comeback the crowd was hoping for. “We fell too much into the hype because it was senior night,” said Ash. The team needed to focus more on the game and have more coordination with each other. The game was not counted for the season because Grinnell is not in the conference that Mount Vernon is playing in.

The highlight of Thursday, however, was the Mustangs’ senior night, where  this is when the High School senior basketball players are honored for their work. For the occasion there were comedic cardboard cut-outs of all 10 the ten seniors and one of coach Ed Timm yelling and pointing at them to do their jobs and play hard. They announced the 10 players to be united with their parents for pictures and to honor the people behind the athlete.

“We do these games to get better” Head Coach Ed Timm said on non-conference games. Coach Timm wanted to get better every day this season and he was satisfied so far of the varsity team, Timm is also very proud of their team cohesion.