John Carroll’s Danny Wallack takes two steps past the half-court line.
He greets one Baldwin Wallace player with a congenial slap. He approaches another opponent and duplicates the gesture.
He looks up. His gait slightly changes. He pats the next player he encounters on the back of the left shoulder.
Both players want to pause and chat. Neither budges. A game is about to begin.
The referee tosses the ball into the air seven seconds later.
Baldwin Wallace scores immediately, and Jaron Crowe receives his first defensive assignment: smother somebody he has known since those draining Mentor High School practices, the two-hour track meets that partially explain why they are in same University Heights gym on this mid-January night.
‘You come into that program and you think your work ethic is good,’ Crowe said. ‘You leave the program, and you didn’t think you could work as hard as you did for those four years.’
Danny Wallack and Jaron Crowe are products of the same system who landed in the same college conference. They played the same position at Mentor for the same demanding coach.
‘I think it’s the most important position on the floor,’ said Bob Krizancic, the coach who pushed both players.
Wallack, a sophomore, and Crowe, a junior, are former Mentor point guards. Ditto for Mount Union freshman Jeff Foreman. John Carroll, Baldwin Wallace and Mount Union compete in the Ohio Athletic Conference, a vibrant Division III circuit consisting of devoted athletes paying their own tuition bills and innovative coaches who make less than six figures.
Crowe was Mentor’s starting point guard from 2008-10. Wallack and Foreman played the position in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
Krizancic recites the numbers like a baker boasting about the dozens of croissants his daily work yields.
The Cardinals went 129-29 over the last six seasons. They averaged 20 shots per game more than their opponents. They committed eight turnovers per game despite a relentless, up-tempo style of play.
One fact means more to Krizancic than the gaudy numbers.
‘Every kid who has started for us since 2009 except one has played college ball,’ said Krizancic, referring to two sports, football and basketball. ‘We have even had our sixth or seventh guy play a year or two at some places, because they play hard and were smart.’
Mike Moran, who has coached a half-dozen Mentor players in 22 years at John Carroll, said inking a Mentor point guard is the closest thing to a guarantee in Division III basketball.
‘If he’s in that program and starting, he’s a player, plain and simple,’ Moran said. ‘Bob has guys that don’t even see the floor that I would have an interest in. There aren’t too many Mentor kids we wouldn’t recruit.’ Wallack steals a pass and doesn’t hesitate. He goes on the attack, an aggressive, instinctive tactic he learned before college.
He scoots past half court. He reaches the 3-point-line.
Resistance arrives.
Crowe doesn’t slap the floor like a throwback player developed in a stuffy gym. But he steadies his legs, lowers his base, extends his arms and slides his feet. His defensive form resembles what a physical eduction teacher/basketball coach introduces in middle school. Few players bother to perfect it.
The sequence lasts 10 pulsating seconds. Wallack dribbles left and right, forward and backward. He finally unleashes an awkward 12-footer. The shot never had a chance and meekly rattles off the rim.
‘I kind of know their tendencies, so it’s a little bit easier to defend them,’ Crowe said of facing other former Mentor guards. The pace of Mentor’s practices are dizzying.
Seven-second drills. Nine-second drills. Sessions never lasting longer than two hours.
Enter the gym dry. Bring two T-shirts. Leave with both drenched in sweat.
‘It’s non-stop,’ Krizancic said. ‘It’s about quality, not length.’
Mount Union and John Carroll rank 13th and 14th in Division III, averaging 87.6 and 87.2 points per game, respectively.
Mount Union coach Mike Fuline and John Carroll’s Moran play taxing styles dominated by savvy perimeter players.
Mount Union is second in the nation, converting more than 12 3-pointers per game. To maintain its up-tempo ways, John Carroll uses two waves of players, a Blue and White group.
Neither system is easy to grasp – unless you are a former Mentor point guard.
‘We have the ability to go out and get up and down and play full court,’ Foreman said. ‘I like that, because that’s where I come from, that’s what I have learned the best.’
Fuline, who coached at Massillon Jackson and Rootstown High Schools, said Foreman hails from a ‘unique high school system.’
Jackson is a Division I high school program, so Fuline experienced frequent encounters with Mentor players before becoming a college coach. Jackson and Mentor players stayed at the same hotel during a tournament in San Diego. Fuline returned home intrigued by what he witnessed.
‘You’re not going to get a knucklehead from Mentor,’ he said. ‘You can talk to them for 30 seconds, and you know they are unbelievable people.’
And versatile players.
Mentor guards are expected to penetrate, shoot from the outside, dictate a game’s pace, call plays and throw sharp, crisp passes. Their defensive assignments are varied, with matchups ranging from tracking 5-foot-8 guards to stalling 6-foot-8 forwards.
Multiple players handle the ball, and Krizancic said combo guards are more likely to receive college opportunities than guards who learn one position. Of the three former Mentor point guards in the OAC, Crowe is the only one handling the ball the majority of his team’s possessions. Wallack and Foreman primarily operate away from the ball, a task neither daunting nor unfamiliar.
Foreman didn’t play point guard until his senior season, because three older guards – Wallack, Cole Krizancic and Justin Fritts – could handle the position. Cole Krizancic (Ashland) and Fritts (Wheeling Jesuits) play at Division II colleges.
Mentor’s lack of height forced Foreman to play small and power forward as a sophomore and junior. Foreman is 6-foot-2, which by Mentor standards, qualifies as a forward-sized athlete.
Playing point guard represented the biggest challenge of Foreman’s high school career. The Cardinals faced some ultra-talented teams last season, including Huntingon Prep, a national power loaded with major-college talent. After some early stumbles, Foreman steadied his play and the Cardinals won a Division I state title, the first boys basketball title in school history.
‘That made me believe that coming to a school like Mount Union I could compete at that level, especially because I played the point-guard position and had the ball in my hands a lot,’ Foreman said.
Wallack said playing point guard at Mentor forced him to think quick, which helped when he reached John Carroll, where he immediately entered Moran’s rotations.
‘There was pressure because we had so many possessions in high school,’ Wallack said. ‘But you gain confidence through practice. The coaching staff demanded a lot from you through the week, so when the weekends came, you performed.’ The head-to-head encounters decrease in the second half.
Crowe spins into the lane for a layup, trimming John Carroll’s lead to two points. Wallack hits two 3-pointers in less than a minute, expanding John Carroll’s lead to 10 points.
Crowe drives into the lane. He sneaks a pass to a teammate for an uncontested basket. With 11.3 seconds left, Crowe receives the ball in transition and surges past the Blue Streaks’ defense for a layup, trimming the margin to two points.
The score doesn’t change again. John Carroll wins, 71-69.
It’s the first time Wallack has defeated Crowe in college.
‘You want to face the best,’ Wallack said. ‘And growing up in high school, Jaron was the best.’ Baldwin Wallace coach Duane Seldon sat in the Value City Arena seats and watched the 6-foot Crowe tie a state-semifinal record by hitting seven 3-pointers during Mentor’s overtime loss to Cincinnati Moeller in 2010.
State tournament games are showcases. Division I coaches are foraging for their future recruiting classes. Division II coaches are polishing the current year’s class. And Division III coaches are in Seldon’s position, hoping a coach offering athletic scholarships doesn’t swipe a player they noticed before everybody else.
Seldon was conflicted. He recruited Crowe as hard as any athlete in his coaching career. Seldon was excited Crowe played his best game on a major stage. But on his way home, he called an assistant and uttered some deflating words, ‘We might have just lost him.’
Seldon’s 7-year-old son wasn’t as pessimistic.
‘My son is in the backseat and says, ‘You’re getting him,’ ‘ Seldon said.
A month later, Crowe called Seldon, informing the coach he was coming to Baldwin Wallace. Seldon celebrated by taking his son to McDonald’s. A Big Mac never tasted so good.
‘We thought he would be the guy you would want to build around for four years,’ Seldon said. ‘We thought he was that good.’
Fuline actually lost Foreman. After seven months of attending Mentor games and practices and cultivating a strong relationship with Foreman and his family, the state tournament changed Foreman’s recruitment.
Multiple schools offered Foreman, who had verbally committed to Mount Union, scholarship money. Foreman signed with Ashland, where he enrolled in summer classes. As fall approached, Foreman said something didn’t feel right, on and off the court. He called Fuline.
‘I said, ‘If you got anything for me, I would love to come back,” Foreman said.
Fuline was playing golf when he received the call. He halted his round. He wanted Foreman to examine everything associated with the decision. Mount Union, after all, isn’t permitted to offer athletic scholarships because of its Division III status.
‘I said, ‘That’s a family decision and you should really think about it. You are leaving a lot of money on the table,” Fuline said. ‘That was the high school coach coming out of me.’
A day later, Foreman was in Alliance, registering for classes.
‘Jeff’s attraction was that he was really good,’ Fuline said. ‘Then you consider the program he played for, and who he played for, and who he played against.’
Wallack’s recruiting story is a simple one. He’s 5-foot-10 and always wanted to play point guard for Mentor.
‘That was the position I was destined to be,’ he said. ‘It was where I fell.’
Mentor point guard was all Moran needed to hear when recruiting Wallack.
‘You look at the stature of those guys,’ Moran said. ‘If you take those guys and throw them in a classroom, nobody would pick them out as basketball players. Bob’s taken kids that are. … I don’t want to say ordinary, but they are guys that aren’t stature-wise huge, and he makes them outstanding players.’
