Blue Ridge’s Derrick Jones knows exactly what he’s looking at when he lines up alongside Maliq Brown.
“Maliq is a monster — that’s an ACC player right there,” Jones said.
The Carmel School’s squad likely had a similar take on Brown after the Barons rolled 83-55 Wednesday night with Brown exploding for 25 points and four rebounds. Brown seemingly poured it in from the opening tip before finally adding an exclamation point late with a fastbreak flush that followed shortly after Jones’ own jam as the Barons put Carmel, a VISAA D3 state semifinalist last year, away.
“The big thing with Maliq is just the process,” said Blue Ridge coach Cade Lemcke. “He’s now taken the next step for developing his outside shot — he hit the three today. But now he’s also understanding how aggressive he can be finishing around the rim, he’s got such a high IQ and such a good feel for the game and we need him to be aggressive, I was proud of him.”
Brown was far from the only Baron with an explosive performance as Michael Gray and Houston Emory both just missed double doubles with Gray scoring 12 points while grabbing nine boards and dishing out four assists while Emory notched nine points and nine boards to go with a dominant six blocks on the defensive end.
Emory was playing in his first game that counted since missing the last half of the Barons’ state championship season in 2019-2020 with a stress fracture in his back. It’s also clear the development he’s undergone in that time, paralleling Brown’s growth that each player put on display against a Carmel team that could answer with size of its own.
“He missed 60 percent of the season but he’s another one that has been working on his shot, been working on his footwork around the rim,” Lemcke said. “It was great for our bigs to go against great big guys. They both (Brown and Emory) made some great passes to each other, I thought our bigs as a whole did a great job of sharing the ball.”
It helped the Barons’ efforts too that Jones shook off a slow first half and scored the bulk of his 11 points in the early stages of the second half.
“The coaches told me to keep my head in the game and keep bringing energy to the floor and let that translate — defense turns into offense for me and I kind of let that take over in the second half,” Jones said.
That surge helped snuff out Carmel’s hopes of a comeback after they’d cut an early Blue Ridge lead down to single digits early in the second quarter. The Barons rebuilt that lead before the break and were up 38-27 heading into the locker room.
Midway through the fourth, Jones unleashed a monster dunk that helped hold off another Carmel push that had nearly cut the lead back to single digits again.
The Barons’ typically stifling packline defense was pretty locked in from the opening tip, but Carmel simply refused to go away most of the night until the closing minutes of the fourth when fatigue and the Barons’ depth took over.
“We’ve got a lot more practices in than these other teams and we’re so deep in our bench that when our starters start to get tired we keep hitting them at every angle,” Jones said. “Our conditioning helps a lot.”
Kobe Jerome finished with eight points and four assists on the night for the Barons, combining with Gray in the backcourt as starters in what has the potential to be a two-headed point guard nightmare for opposing teams.
New additions Shanon Simango and Levi Pigues played critical roles and showed some serious flashes with Simango notching six points and two blocks while Pigues had five points and two boards. Devin Walker had five points and two rebounds including a fourth quarter three that helped put the game away.
Like most other teams, the Barons are taking each game day by day, and could play again Friday before a home-and-home with Hargrave that’s planned for next week.
