Blue Ridge’s boys basketball team always defines itself by its defense. And it’s in moments like the closing minutes of its game with Miller where the Mavericks’ own defense made offense hard to come by where the Barons’ ability to summon a stop becomes most apparent.
“They fight, we have 11 guys who are willing to fight on defense,” said Blue Ridge coach Cade Lemcke. “If we’re up for a possession or two and have to get a stop, I’ll put my money on our guys.”
With under 30 seconds left and clinging to a 3-point lead, the Barons locked up the Mavericks, denied a drive to the basket and forced someone besides the Mavericks’ Jordan Horne or Austin Ball to take a shot. The approach worked as Miller missed and Blue Ridge’s Cam Brewer eventually made a tough catch on an inbounds pass and knocked down two free throws to ice a 52-50 win for the Barons.
“It’s a rivalry game, everyone is going to go a little bit harder,” Brewer said. “We know what they’re going to run, they know what we’re going to run and it’s just an all out battle.”
Blue Ridge got 14 points and four boards from Kamren Martin to lead the offense with Brewer chipping in eight points, five boards and three assists. Shannon Simango had 10 points and eight boards underneath and Colby White scored nine points including a buzzer-beater 3-pointer at the end of the first half.
The Barons appeared to be in control of the game up 12 points with a little more than four minutes to go in the game after Brewer hit a three, but the Mavericks got going in a big way on both ends of the court with Blue Ridge not managing another field goal for the rest of the contest. Miller had to shake off foul trouble for DeLaurier and got a boost from Jaylen Dyer (five points, seven boards) hitting a big fourth quarter 3-pointer and Will Bonde (eight points, eight boards)with a nice finish in the lane. Horne was managing the game particularly well at point guard and finished with 19 points, two assists and three steals.
“Jordan played probably his best game since he got to Miller,” said Miller coach Jack Meriwether. “He just controlled it and Blue Ridge makes life miserable for your point guard and I think that’s the first time we had a point guard who was able to control the game against them.”
Miller’s play down the stretch set the stage for a potential equalizer, but that’s when the Barons came up with a critical stop. Three points at 50-47 was as close as the Mavericks would get until Ball buried a three at the buzzer with the game decided.
It was the second down-to-the-wire matchup between two programs that often face each other in the postseason and may be on track to do so again in the VIC tournament. Once more Miller came up just short despite the big time performance from Horne.
“It says a lot about them that we keep coming up short in these games against some of the best teams in the country and they keep coming back and doing it again,” Meriwether said. “In March, we hope it breaks the other way.”
Both squads play in tournaments this weekend before and then have two more weeks of regular season play ahead of of the postseason.
