No. 1 St. Edward boys basketball decisively defeats No. 6 Mentor, 91-49 (video, slideshow)

BEREA, Ohio — Once St. Edward's boys basketball team gets on a roll, there isn't much many teams can do to slow them down let alone stop them.

Mentor was the latest to figure that out Sunday when the Eagles routed the Cardinals, 91-49, at the Scholastic Play-By-Play Classic at Baldwin Wallace University.

The Eagles, ranked No. 1 in the cleveland.com Top 25 boys basketball poll, shot an impressive 17 of 26 from the field in the first half. Their defense also forced Mentor, ranked No. 6, into 12 first-half turnovers and limited the Cardinals to just nine points in the second quarter.

St. Edward did not hit a three-pointer until its last basket of the game.

Click this link for analysis from all five games at the event.

"I think it just goes to show that we're getting a little smarter and we understand that we don't need to throw up jump shots," St. Edward coach Eric Flannery said. "We got some size advantage, at least we did today, and we got the ball inside. I just was proud that we did that. A lot of teams would get selfish and start being careless with the ball. We did a very good job of just keep attacking the rim and pounding the ball inside."

Marsalis Hamilton led the way for the Eagles with 22 points, taking advantage of the size advantage he had under the basket. His success and the success his team had in the paint was a key to St. Edward's big offensive performance.

"We wanted to make a point that we're going to continue to pound the ball, get the ball inside whether it's by dribble penetration," Flannery said. "Marsalis is 6-foot-3, but he's strong as an ox. He can go through people and draw fouls. It's probably nice for him for a change to go up against guys that are smaller than he is."

Caleb Potter led Mentor with 19 points, and Conner Krizancic had 14.

Mentor coach Bob Krizancic felt his Cardinals have had to face quite a bit of adversity throughout the early portion of the season, with several players coming back from football and a difficult first part of the schedule.

"We didn't expect to be (3-5). It is new territory," coach Krizancic said. "I told the team, 'God put you in these positions to see what you're going to do with them. You've heard it before. Life is 10 percent of what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it. And now it's how to react to it.'

"It's gut-check time. It's character time."

St. Edward had a 26-24 lead midway through the second quarter, then went on a 47-14 run to push the lead out to 33 by the end of the third quarter.

"I was just proud of our guys," Flannery said. "We stuck to our game plan. We kept pounding the ball inside and we did a better job defensively as the game went on.

"We didn't get sloppy. Typically in a game, we might get a little lead and then start settling for jump shots and early shots. We kept attacking the basket. We kept getting easy baskets, and I think that was a killer to them. They had a hard time stopping us inside and we were at least smart enough to keep attacking and keep doing it."