Last season Western Albemarle and William Monroe’s boys basketball teams meet four times — twice during the regular season, once during the Jefferson District Tournament and once in the Region II Division 3 playoffs. The teams split the four encounters with the Greene Dragons taking the most valuable of the meetings in the regional tournament.
“Nothing’s ever easy against them,” said Warriors coach Darren Maynard of one of last season’s best rivalries. “And we knew coming up (to Standardsville) tonight that it was going to be the same.”
Well once again it was a struggle, but behind the play of two of their top seniors, and arguably two of the Jefferson District’s best players, the Warriors were able to leave Greene County with a 49-44 victory on Wednesday night.
The Warriors found themselves trailing by a basket at halftime, but were up by double digits for most of the second half until Monroe came storming back in the final minutes of the fourth.
Dante Crawford and Christian Pierce led the way on both ends of the court for Western, combining for 30 points and 14 rebounds and four blocks. With Monroe employing a triangle-and-two zone defense geared at keeping a close eye on Pierce and Travis Hester, Crawford wound up having to do most of the heavy lifting in the early going.
“”He’s played really well in all three of our games ,” Darren Maynard said. “He’s really stepped up from last year and been more composed and poised. We wouldn’t have done this tonight without him.”
Monroe used the same defense last season with success against the Warriors, and it’s something Western is getting used to.
“It’s something we’re working on in practice,” Crawford said. “We just need to have our players come off the bench and play well.”
In the second half, Pierce was able make an impact offensively, and once he started scoring the Warriors started to roll, going on an 11-4 run in the third quarter to put them out in front.
“We talked a lot at halfitime about settling down,” Darren Maynard said. “(Monroe) got us to speed up in the first half and we didn’t function very welll, and they hit a lot of big shots to put us in a bad spot. But we settled down in the second half and started playing better in that third quarter.”
Those big shots were from some new faces at William Monroe. The Dragons made hay in the second quarter from beyond the arc as Markees Towles, one of Monroe’s few holdovers from last year, drew the attention of the Western deffense and then kicked it out to one of his open men at the corners of the court.
“We followed our game plan perfectly in the first half except for (Desmond Shaver) getting into foul trouble,” said William Monroe coach Mike Maynard. “Markees really controlled the tempo. He also is beginning to trust his teammates. He was making some great passes, kicking it out to some of the younger kids and they were making big shots.”
One of those younger players was Jordan Gentry, much to the delight of his coach.
“He is an absolute joy to coach,” said Mike Maynard.
After Towles’ 15 points, the sophomore was the next best scorer for the Dragons with his 12 points which were fueled by a trio of 3-pointers. Monroe started the game by going down by six points in the first quarter, but rallied towards the end of that frame into the second frame to ultimately take a 2-point lead at the half.
Unfortunately for Monroe those shots weren’t there in the same way when the third quarter began.
“A lot of those kids hitting those shots we had never heard about before,” Darren Maynard said. “We changed our man defense in the second half after that.”
To make matters worse for Monroe, what open shots they did find were marred by a cold shooting stretch. The Dragons were held scoreless nearly the first four minutes of the fourth quarter.
“You can’t live and die by the jump shot,” Mike Maynard said. “We’ve got to develop some kind of post game.”
The Dragons are going through some noteworthy growing pains as they lost a number of key players to graduation last season, including their two best, Mike Roach and Mike Wims. Given the influx of new talent, Mike Maynard is just happy to see his kids scrapping out on the court as they work to find out what they’ve got.
“I’m really proud of them for never giving up and playing hard,” Mike Maynard said. “Right now, in my mind I’m not going to judge them on wins and losses.”
For Western, Crawford led all players with his 18 points while Pierce contributed 12. Jake Nidiffer wound up with six points and five rebounds.
The Warriors (2-1, 1-1) will travel to Charlottesville on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
William Monroe (0-3, 0-1) will host Monticello on the same day at the same time.
