Season closes for Cougars
Key third-quarter turnovers hamper Stone in 2A South Region final loss to River Hill
CLARKSVILLE — During the first half of Saturday night’s Class 2A South Region championship game, the Thomas Stone boys basketball team was effective against River Hill’s match-up zone defense, scoring 19 first-quarter points and carrying a 32-26 halftime lead into the locker room.
However, to start the second half, River Hill switched to a man-to-man defense and Stone’s offense became stagnant, turnover woes began and shot attempts in the lane became tough to come by.
River Hill reeled off 13 straight points to take a 39-32 lead in the first five minutes of the third quarter, while not allowing a single Stone point.
The visiting Cougars weren’t able to recover the rest of the way as the Hawks of Howard County delivered with a 6151 victory to claim its first region title since 2007.
River Hill (20-4 overall) outscored Stone, 35-19 in the second half, but it was defense that was the key. When Stone managed to get a shot off, the Hawks’ big men of Dylan Daniels and OJ Okojie would swat or alter the attempts. Daniels and Okojie combined
for nine blocks in the win.
“We obviously made some adjustments and our bigs were able to alter some shots and get some outlets for some transition baskets,” River Hill head coach Matt Graves said. “We were patient offensively, got some back doors, found our shooters and good things happened for us.”
After a slow start, senior guard Jaden Martin led the way with a team-high 16 points, scoring 11 of his 15 second-half points in the fourth quarter. JaLuke cob Krause finished with 14, Daniels had 13 and
Champion scored six to anchor the Hawks’ senior core.
Stone (18-7), which missed winning its first region title since 2013, was led by senior forward Kamau Mitchell with a gamehigh 24 points, scoring 13 in the first half, hitting five three-pointers on the night.
“We knew we had to stop No. 42 [Mitchell]. He was killing us the first half and we wanted to lock down defensively in the second half,” Martin said. “We started to execute offensively and forced turnovers, which led to easy baskets. We were in more of a rhythm the last two quarters and that helped
us big time.”
Junior forward Gary Grant finished with 12 points for the Cougars.
In the pivotal third, River’s Hill offensive run began with a putback from Okojie and a three-pointer from Krause, who followed that up with a transition layup and a pass to Martin for basket on another fast break. Krause then finished another layup and Martin banked in a jumper.
Mitchell finally broke the Cougars’ scoring drought with an and-1 conversion to cut the deficit to 39-35 and came within 4138 entering the fourth.
The Hawks lead grew to 12 points midway in the fourth as the Cougars did not have enough time to overcome the deficit.
River Hill faces 2A East champion North Caroline in the state semifinals on Friday at the University of Maryland’s Xfinity Center in College Park.
“They’re a good team,” Stone head coach Dale Lamberth said. “They ran their stuff very disciplined. So once you make those kind of mistakes, and then they went back door a couple times right out of the third quarter. So they did some good things well that contributed to that run as well.”