Blue Ridge’s boys basketball team essentially went from zero to 60 Friday, ending a nearly 50-day layoff with a back-to-back doubleheader against The Hill School out of Pennsylvania.
“It has been awhile, we had our last game 48 days ago so to just get back on the court it felt good,” said Blue Ridge’s Maliq Brown.
It clearly felt good after the first half of the double header as the Barons beat Hill School 60-52 with Brown stuffing the stat sheet with nine points, eight assists, six rebounds and four steals.
Adding to the degree of difficulty of trying to kickstart things after nearly 50 days off against a Hill School squad led by Vanderbilt signee Gabe Dorsey was the fact that the Barons were doing that without the reigning state player of the year Michael Gray. Gray was out of the lineup with a sports hernia, shifting backcourt mate Kobe Jerome to Jerome’s natural spot at the point. Gray is such an impact player though that it took a trio of guards to fill the void.
“Levi (Pigues who had eight points) stepped up in a huge way today — Michael Gray is our leading scorer and we had to fill that role,” Jerome said. “It wasn’t just Levi, Zion (Clark) came in and Devin (Walker) came in as well and it helped because Michael was out.”
It helped too that Jerome was able to shake out of an early funk and get the offense moving in the second half. The Barons trailed by three in the first half 24-21, but an 11-5 run coming out of the locker room got things going in the right direction.
“Definitely in my head the last couple of weeks I knew Mike wasn’t playing so at the begining of the game, I was trying to hone in on trying to take a lot of the shots,” Jerome said. It wasn’t working out, so in the second half I stuck to the game plan and found the guys (and played) like I usually play.”
Jerome finished with 14 points, two assists and a pair of boards. Definsively the Barons were stout too, capitalizing in particular in the second half with Houston Emory helping lead that effort with seven blocks while Brown’s four steals played a big role. Emory had seven points and second boards to go with the seven blocks.
“I thought as the game wore on, our press was able to give us some opportunities,” Lemcke said.
Derrick Jones had nine points and two boards while Clark notched seven points and three rebounds.
The Barons lost the second matchup with Hill School 46-38 later in the night.
