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Self-Sacrifice: Blue Ridge pulls away from Highland to win fourth straight title

Photo by Bart Isley

When you sign up to play basketball at Blue Ridge, you have to know you’re about to sacrifice something. Whether it’s playing time, glory, point totals, being in the starting lineup early in your career or at all. Everyone on the Blue Ridge roster is going to sacrifice something at some point.

 

“But if everybody comes and shows up and plays their role, it’s for this,” said Blue Ridge senior Levi Pigues pointing to the state championship medal draped around his neck. 

 

Sacrifice is exactly how a team led by four seniors who weren’t superstars by any means when they set foot on campus completed a four year run as champions Saturday, winning a state title every year they’ve been on campus including four-year standout big men Maliq Brown and Houston Emory. The Barons beat Highland 67-50 in a state title clash where the final score didn’t do the game justice. The Hawks, who beat the Barons earlier in the season on a buzzer beater, gave Blue Ridge everything it could handle most of the game before the Barons pulled away in the fourth quarter to secure the title and avenge that earlier season loss.

 

“This was a hard game for me, I was starting to feel emotional toward the end of that fourth quarter because you think back to what these guys have done,” said Blue Ridge coach Cade Lemcke. “None of them were stars when they first got here, they all waited their turn, continued to get better, continued to develop. ”

 

The Barons led 47-44 heading into the fourth and completely locked up Highland defensively in the final frame to pull away, with Cam Brewer going 5-for-6 at the line and Brown scoring six points while Robby Matos hit a big three and Devin Walker had a layup that broke the Hawks’ back. 

 

Brown put together yet another double double with 14 points and 11 rebounds that included a series of monster dunks in the halfcourt and off his own inbounds pass in the third quarter. He tossed the ball off the back of a defender and then dunked it off the ricochet, helping get Blue Ridge started in the second half with a savvy senior play. 

 

“It felt great, all the work we put in, knowing the schedule we put against us, the practices, it didn’t feel like we could do it but it turned out we could,” Brown said.

 

But Brown knows about sacrifice because his career didn’t start out the way it ended. In fact, in the first state title he won, he went 0-for-2 from the field and while he showed potential that freshman year he was far from the game-altering dragon and double double machine he has become. His development has been incredible in his time at Blue Ridge.

 

“He just makes winning plays on both ends of the court,” Lemcke said. “You don’t have to call plays for him, he doesn’t demand the ball, he just goes out and gets it. It was great for him to have the game that he had today.”

 

Emory has been sacrificing the last two weeks, desperately trying to rehabilitate a severe high ankle sprain where the bruising still stretches halfway up his calf. He had to sit out the semifinal and watched as Shannon Simango filled his role and made all kinds of little plays to get Blue Ridge into the final. Emory played at nearly full strength Saturday and impacted the game on the defensive end in particular, making Highland work around his length. 

 

“Thankfully there were no fractures and (we knew it) would take a miracle to play again (before the title game) but there was a chance,” Emory said. “I really want to thank Alec Yost, a trainer at William Monroe, he was able to work with me every day and that special care got me back to almost 100 percent.”

 

Then there’s Devin Walker, a point guard who waited his turn behind some of the most accomplished and talented guards to ever play at Blue Ridge in Michael Gray and Kobe Jerome, knowing his day was coming. He got a chance Saturday to prove people outside the Blue Ridge locker room who may not have thought he was the guy to lead the Barons to another championship wrong, tying Brown for a team-high 14 points, dishing out eight assists and pulling down four rebounds. Included in that 14 points were three critical second quarter 3-pointers that helped Blue Ridge take control of the game.

 

“A lot of people didn’t think that I would be able to come in here and lead this team,” Walker said. “Showing the doubters wrong and doing what they just did is very special. Helping this team make history? I can’t even explain this feeling.” 

 

It wasn’t just the seniors who sacrificed over the last year. Newcomers Brewer, Logan Rhoades, Matos and returner Macon Emory all could’ve been the featured player in a lot of other programs, but they played their roles Saturday. Emory came off the bench for a big three. Brewer scored nine points and battled for loose balls. Rhoades hit three big threes for nine points and bounced back from a frustrating state semifinal game where the Barons couldn’t find an offensive rhythm. Matos showed no regard for his body, flying and contorting and twisting and fighting on every drive to the basket while scoring eight points and grabbing three rebounds.

 

Everyone put their own concerns, their own needs to the side to make sure that Blue Ridge stayed on the top of the VISAA D2 heap. It paid off Saturday with a plaque, some history — the Barons’ first team to win four-straight state titles — and medals around everyone’s neck. 

 

“The one thing that our team is all about is buying into our three principles, hard work, selflessness and discipline,” Emory said. “We all buy into it, we all have trust in each other.”

 

And that’s why they’re celebrating once again.

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