By Drew Goodman / Scrimmageplaycva.com contributor
Albemarle’s boys basketball program reached the state tournament in three consecutive years between 2016-2018. Those teams were littered with All-Jefferson District performers and remained relatively healthy outside of an early-season injury to former JD Player of the Year Austin Katstra in 2017.
The 2020 version of the Patriots had none of the above going for them.
A trio of season-ending injuries, including one to top scorer and rebounder, Josh Morse, combined with some early struggles left many outside of the Albemarle program wondering if the Pats would even be in the position to play for a bid to states.
And yet, following Albemarle’s hard-fought 51-47 win over William Fleming in Tuesday’s Region 5D semifinals, the Patriots are back in the state tournament for the fourth time in five seasons.
“We’ve gone through an awful lot this year,” Albemarle head coach Greg Maynard said. “To battle through injuries- I think we’ve had three different kids with broken bones, a dislocated shoulder, all kinds of things, and they just keep fighting, they just keep fighting.”
Minus the injuries, Tuesday’s semifinal clash against the Colonels summed up Albemarle’s roller coaster season.When the Patriots absolutely needed a made free throw or a defensive stop, they got one. Clinging to a one-point lead with 3:24 remaining in the game, Albemarle burned 1:53 off of the clock before Fleming finally fouled Justin Murkey.
Murkey’s ensuing front-end of the one-and-one proceeded to bounce off of every part of the rim before finally going down. The second foul shot was much less suspenseful, and the Patriots held a three-point lead with 1:24 left to play.
After Fleming’s Christian Goode scored off of a putback, the Colonels elected to put Dasaun Taylor on the line for another one-and-one attempt. Both of Taylor’s attempts bounced around several times before falling through the net to again give the Patriots a three-point advantage.
Albemarle failed to seal the game from the foul line moments later, which gave William Fleming one more chance to tie the score at 50 with 16.3 seconds left. The Colonels missed a potential game-tying three after a timeout, and junior Will Hornsby came up with a huge rebound for the Patriots.
Hornsby then missed his first foul shot on the other end, before knocking down the second to ice the game with 1.3 seconds left. The free throw marked Hornsby’s first and only point of the game.
“We just keep battling — it’s both ends, nothing’s real pretty, but we just battle as hard as we can on defense and just try to scrap for points any way we can,” Maynard said.
Speaking of defense, the Patriots became the first team to hold the Colonels to under 50 points since Northside did it on January 18 of last year. Albemarle limited Fleming’s leading scorer, Donovan St Juste, to just eight points, well below his 20-plus average for the season. The Colonels led 35-28 after an explosive start to the third quarter, but AHS took the court with a renewed sense of purpose on the defensive end following a timeout.
Albemarle forced Fleming into a number of difficult shots, which resulted in empty possessions for much of the late-third and the entire fourth quarter. William Fleming managed just five field goals in the last 13 minutes of play, which allowed the Patriots to crawl back, and eventually seize control of the game.
“We just worked really hard in practice. I gave my scout team a lot of credit for running [William Fleming’s] offense so well that, we knew what they were doing, we knew their plays, it was just a matter of stopping real good players,” Maynard said. “It’s just a team effort on the defensive end for us. We never know who’s going out there with injuries and foul trouble and all that.”
The victory snapped William Fleming’s 15-game winning-streak.
Wilson Hagen and Chris Woods led the Patriots with 10 points each. Woods finished one rebound shy of a double-double with nine boards. Taylor registered nine points, Murkey added eight, and Cam Johnson added seven.
Albemarle led by one at the break, but quickly saw its slim advantage turn into a three-possession led for William Fleming. The Colonels opened the third quarter with a 10-2 run and looked to hall all of the momentum heading into the stretch run of the game. Woods finally put an end to the Patriots’ struggles on offense with a big-time three-pointer to pull the home team to within four.
Taylor later scored two huge buckets in the final minute of the third frame, including a buzzer-beating layup to tie the game at 37. A triple by Johnson with 7:11 remaining in the fourth quarter gave Albemarle the lead for good, as the Patriots nursed their slim advantage for the remainder of the night.
Albemarle will travel to face top-seeded Patrick Henry for the Region 5D championship game on Friday night. Albemarle fell to PHS in overtime back on December 6.
With at least two guaranteed games left and the amount that his unit has grown since the last meeting, Maynard likes where his team is heading into another matchup with Patrick Henry and the opportunity to play in the state tournament.
“Tonight was tremendously important to me to just to get [to states] with all the adversity again that we’ve faced to take this group,” Maynard said. “We’re not as talented as those other teams that I took three years in a row to states, but the heart that these guys play with … they didn’t feel sorry for themselves, I told them they couldn’t, and we just keep battling.”
