Albemarle’s boys basketball team struggled for a half against Monticello, but after the break things picked up and the Patriots turned a slight four-point halftime advantage into a 71-57 victory over the Mustangs.
“I thought we were even executing well at the beginning of the third quarter — they weren’t going in the basket but we were doing much better things than we were in the first half,” said Albemarle coach Greg Maynard. “We got the ball inside to Austin Katstra and if you do that enough that’s going to open up the outside.”
A pair of top notch performances by Myles Adams-Yates and Katstra in the fourth quarter (each had six in the final frame) ignited Albemarle down the stretch as turnovers on the defensive end led to some critical buckets. Adams-Yates finished with eight points, eight assists, seven steals and five rebounds in a stat-sheet filling performance. Katstra poured in 27 points, including a pair of 3-pointers as the post player flashed some range.
“We just attacked their zone much better in the second half and finally got them out of it,” Maynard said.
Jake Hahn also played a big offensive role with 17 points, the bulk of which came on five 3-pointers, two of them in the third quarter. Kennedy Brown came on strong in the second half too at the point guard spot with six assists on the night.
“He really played a good second half, he settled it down, he got the ball to the right spot and he attacked the middle a couple of times and got his floater,” Maynard said. “He had six assists and I’m sure most of those were in the second half.”
Monticello hung tight with the Patriots for three quarters despite a pair of key players — Savion Thomas and Gabe Thacker — being out after a collision between the two in practice earlier in the week. That forced the Mustangs to turn to young players like freshman Jacoby Jackson to carry the load beyond senior Rashad Brooks’ 18 points. Jackson hit a trio of 3-pointers including a big one in the third quarter that helped keep the Mustangs within striking distance.
“The guys stepped up, we had some young kids stepped up and some older guys stepped up,” said Monticello coach Robert Shelton. “(Jackson) is a really good player and we’ve got a really good group of young kids.”
But unlike past games where the Mustangs have struggled offensively, this time they couldn’t come up with a defensive stop to help take advantage of the offensive spurts that they were putting together.
“Usually it’s the other way around, we struggle offensively and play pretty good defense,” Shelton said. “They’ve got some good shooters and we were unable to play our traditional man defense we had to kind of protect our bigs, so we had to drop back and play some zone.”
Anthony Lee and Robbie Deane each finished with 11 points for the Mustangs. Deane hit a trio of 3-pointers.
Albemarle will travel to take on Spotswood Saturday while Monticello gets a 10-day break before playing E.C. Glass in the Fluvanna Christmas Bash.
