PETERSBURG — After upsetting Benedictine in the semifinals, Bishop O’Connell capped off a hectic week for their team by pulling off another surprise on Saturday in the VISAA Division 1 championship by knocking off Blue Ridge 80-72.
“We’ve had to play five games in the last five days to do this,” said Knights coach Joe Wootten. “I told our players, I don’t know that there’s a high school team in all of the country that has had to go through all the adversity that they have this past week.”
It was a tight contest from start to finish, with guards Chad Holley and Malick Kone doing the leg work for Blue Ridge. Kone had a big first half, scoring 17 points, but was limited offensively in the second half when O’Connell finally recognized the guard’s talents and assigned their best defender, Larry Savage, to the Barons junior.
In the end it was free throws that wound up providing the difference in the fourth quarter as Kendall Marhsall, James Bourne and Wes Robinson were able to build a two possession lead late in the fourth quarter and hit their foul shots down the stretch to keep Blue Ridge at bay.
“It’s crucial that you try and keep a lead against those guys because they handle the ball so well,” said Barons coach Bill Ramsey. “A 4-point lead against that team is tough to overcome.”
The Knights spent most of the night at the charity stripe, attempting 36 free throws and hitting 28 of them.
Marshall, a McDonald’s All-American and North Carolina-bound, led all scorers with 24 points, attacking the basket and picking up 10 points at the free throw line.
“He’s taken his game a whole other level,” Wootten said of his star senior. “I think he’s proven that he’s the best point guard in the country.”
Kone and Holley each finished with 19 points while Andre Roberts hit a pair of 3-pointers and wound up with eight points on the evening.
And though the loss — Blue Ridge’s second straight in a title game — undoubtedly stings, the Barons will graduate just three seniors with Darnell Turner headlining the list. And so with Holley, Kone, Roberts, Kameron Latouche, Cameron Anderson, Isaiah Battle and a handful of others still in the mix, Ramsey is looking forward to the future.
“I told the seniors how much I appreciated their effort but most of the team is going to be back,” Ramsey said. “So we talked a lot about that after this game.”
