Stone girls basketball defeats Westlake
St. Charles boys down Leonardtown; girls lose at buzzer
Coming off a historic win over North Point just two days prior, there was not much time to celebrate for St. Charles’ boys basketball team. The Spartans had to move on to their next test, traveling down to Leonardtown for a Southern Maryland Athletic Conference nondivision contest Fri- day night.
St. Charles (8-2 overall after a 62-55 overtime win over McDonough on Monday night) settled in from the start, getting out to a 38-13 lead by halftime and coming away with a 5545 win. The Raiders (1-6) made a push to come back in the second half but were unsuccessful despite outscoring the Spartans 14-4 in the fourth quarter.
Spartans head coach Brett Campbell agreed that there is never a comfortable lead, especially in high school basketball.
“We tell the guys that this is varsity basketball and those are the 12 best players in the largest school in the conference, so there’s never going to be a comfortable lead with you’re playing varsity basketball,” Campbell said. “The second-half effort [wasn’t there]. We had two assists in the second half, so effort was a lot different, but yes, free throws have been a major stress of ours. Even last game we shot well from the free-throw line and I thought that was the difference in the game against North Point (a 74-69 victory).”
Campbell said consistency is what separates a good team from a great team.
“A basketball game is 32 minutes and we have to be consistent with our effort throughout,” he said.
Senior guard Shiloh Beale was near perfect at the free-throw line, sinking 9 of 10, and fin- ished with a game-high 18 points.
The Raiders held the Spartans back in the final quarter, but it was Beale who scored the team’s first points in the quarter at the line with 1 minute 29 seconds remaining in the game.
Beale said the team has to play through, no mat- ter the situation.
“I thought we started off the first half well; playing as a team and we got off in transition,” Beale said. “But the sec- ond half we fell off a little bit and that’s how they came back. We’ll learn from this, that we have to play all four quarters. You can’t just play two [quar- ters], no matter the lead, up by 15, 20, whatever. We’re a family and we have a lot of chemistry on the team. We’d like to win SMAC this year.”
Sophomore forward Anthony Bowman fin- ished with 14 points for the Spartans, including 4 of 5 from the free-throw line.
“I’ve been playing bas- ketball with coach Campbell since seventh grade,” Bowman said. “Tran- sition offense, coach always talks about transitions and how that will win games and tonight. Me and Shiloh and Cam [Sullivan] just got out and scored like we can. We have to keep the intensi- ty up; that’s what we did against North Point and that’s what we’re going to do against teams like Westlake and Stone, but we prepare for teams like this and Patuxent that aren’t like us. We just try to play against them [to compete].”
Leonardtown impressed its home fans from threepoint range, finishing with seven 3-pointers. Senior left-hander JD Gaddis lit up the boards with three of his own, bringing the Raiders to within nine in the second half, and finished with 10 points. Chris Fenwick (15 points) also put three away from the outside.
Senior guard Adalai Traver who led the team with 17 points, also con- nected with a three. Tra- ver was 10 of 14 from the free-throw line (71.4 per- cent).
The Spartans and Raiders are scheduled to be back in action Wednesday evening with 6:30 tip-offs. St. Charles is slated to be at Stone, while Leonardtown hosts Northern.
Raiders girls beat Spartans at buzzer
At St. Charles on Friday night, Haley O’Reagan’s buzzer-beater gave Leonardtown’s girls team a 6058 win.
The Raiders (7-2) led 20-9 after the first quar- ter, but St. Charles out- scored the visitors 17-12 in the second quarter for the 32-26 halftime score.
“We got off to a pretty good start,” Leonardtown head coach Christie Doerrer said. “But for a lack of a better word, we were playing selfish in the second quarter and our defense wasn’t as good as it was in the first and they got back in the game. Thankfully we nev- er lost the lead through- out the game.”
With 3.3 seconds left in regulation, Doerrer called a timeout.
“I drew up exactly what I wanted to have happen, with Casey [Wilkinson] coming off of a screen,” Doerrer said, “and I wasn’t quite sure how far she’d get up the floor coming off the screen just because I didn’t know how St. Charles was going to set up their defense, but Kayla [Gol- dring] passed her the ball and I didn’t tell Haley really anything.
“She was just smart about her cut and came to ball side and Casey flipped the ball to Haley, she caught it and put it up and thankfully beat the buzzer. It was crazy. Definitely a fun game but closer than it needed to be, but we’ll definitely take the win.”
St. Charles (5-6 after a 58-34 win over McDonough on Monday night) is scheduled to host Stone at 6:30 tonight, while Leonardtown is slated to go up to Northern, also a 6:30 tipoff tonight.
Doerrer said she’s looking forward to the matchup against Northern and realizes the team has some hard work ahead of them with the county rematch against Chopticon on Friday night.
“We know what’s ahead this week,” Doerrer said. “Having the day off today kind of stinks, because I’d much rather be in the gym with the girls trying to get ready but hopefully we’ll have a good practice tomorrow and head up to Northern [tonight]. We’re anticipating a good matchup there.”