Spanky

A stroll down memory lane. Marietta (Ga.) Wheeler won the 2002 Arby’s Classic, defeating Mansfield (Ohio) Senior, the fifth winningest basketball program in the Buckeye State, 68-51. It was a great four-game stretch for Mansfield, which won its first three games by a total of seven points, defeating Rimini (Italy) 62-61; Bristol Tennessee High, 52-49; and Orlando (Fla.) Boone, 72-69. Two Mansfield players made the all-tournament team—Antonio Graves and Yima Chia-Kur. Graves went on to play for Jamie Dixon and the Pitt Panthers in the rugged Big East, while Chia-Kur played two years of junior college ball before finishing his career at Arkansas State. Both players had productive careers playing in Europe after college. Maryville, Tenn., led by future Florida Gator Lee Humphrey, finished in fourth place. Two years later, Mansfield Senior achieved a sparkling 24-2 record, losing in the semi-finals of the Division I state championship tournament in Columbus to Canton McKinley, 73-61. Once a booming, gritty manufacturing town that featured a General Motors stamping plant, a huge Westinghouse appliance plant, a Tappan Stove plant, Mansfield Tire and Rubber, Ohio Brass, an Empire-Detroit steel mill and Borg-Warner plumbing fixture plant, Mansfield is located have way between Cleveland and Columbus.