Hayden leads Millbrook over James Wood

WINCHESTER — James Wood was determined to take Millbrook’s hottest player Julien Hagerman out of Friday’s Class 4 Northwestern District boys’ basketball showdown at Casey Gymnasium.

And for the most part, a defense led by Lavaughan Freeman did just that.

But the Colonels couldn’t account for some of Hagerman’s teammates — mainly Tarelle Hayden and Ben Oates. Hayden sliced through the James Wood defense for 18 points and assisted on several baskets for Oates, who netted 15, as the Pioneers remained unbeaten in district play with a 47-35 victory.

Millbrook (9-4, 6-0) extended its district lead to two full games over everyone else in the district.

Both Millbrook and James Wood (8-3 after Saturday’s 38-27 win over Clarke County, 4-2 district) entered Friday’s contest with six-game winning streaks. The Colonels played this contest without injured starting guard James Cornwell and key reserve Steven Brown.

It was evident from the start that James Wood wanted to make someone other than Hagerman, second in the area with a 16.8 scoring average, beat them. During Millbrook’s six-game win streak, the junior was averaging 20.5 points per game.

But aside from a game-opening 3-pointer, Freeman and several of his teammates did a remarkable job defending Hagerman, who would finish with five points.

“Defensively we had a sound game plan,” James Wood coach Tim Wygant said. “Lavaughan did the primary job, but Connor [Ballentine], Elijah [Boggs] and Jaden [Ashby] did a good job, too. You should be able to have some success playing four-on-four then, but we didn’t do it.”

Hayden was a big reason for that. He had six points and an assist in the first quarter as Millbrook got the lead (13-7) and he had eight points in the final quarter as the Pioneers staved off a James Wood comeback.

Pioneers coach Steven Grubbs said his squad has been expecting an opponent to clamp down on Hagerman, who entered the contest with an area-best 28 3-pointers.

“Julien has been on a tear for the past couple of games,” Grubbs said. “We have talked to Julien about eventually whether its this game, the next game or one of these games, someone is going to put someone on you with no space and run as much as they can. For him, it’s just staying in that mindset of attacking.

“The nice thing is that if you put so much attention on one, it opens up lanes for others. You saw that with Tarelle tonight being able to attack. When they close over, you have Ben Oates just diving down and you get some easy baskets off of it.”

Hayden said his approach was simple.

“With one man down, another one has got to step up,” the senior transfer said. “That’s how basketball is.”

In addition to being able to get to the basket off of the dribble, Hayden was able to find Oates several times. His pretty no-look pass to Oates pushed the Pioneers’ lead to its biggest margin at 37-24 with a minute left in the third quarter.

“Me and Ben have been together since third grade,” Hayden said. “We’ve had a chemistry since we were young.”

But like a nagging rash, James Wood just wouldn’t go away. Trailing 37-26 heading into the final period, the Colonels got a 3-point play from Freeman and a baseline drive from Ashby to quickly slice the Millbrook lead to 37-31 with 6:50 left.

The Colonels would have two possessions with a chance to cut the deficit smaller, but as they had all night they struggled to crack the Millbrook defense.

From there, Hayden took over. He scored eight of the Pioneers’ final 10 points, mostly on drives to the basket.

“When we called a timeout, Coach said, ‘Hey, we can’t be messing around. This game is not over,’” Hayden said. “... We just kept playing hard and we did not stop until the last buzzer.”

“He’s a very good basketball player,” Wygant said of Hayden. “I think we made it easy on him. He’s a good ballplayer and if you make it easy on a good ballplayer to get to the rim, he is going to get to the rim. He’s good. I feel like it wasn’t a lack of effort tonight. It was a lack of execution.”

Grubbs said it is difficult facing the Colonels, who had held opponents to 38.7 points per game during their winning streak.

“I give them credit defensively. They play great,” Grubbs said. “They’re long, lanky and physical. Their rotations are good with everything that they do. You’ve got to keep focus, playing and executing to the best your ability. I think in the fourth quarter when they had to pick up the pace a little bit, you started to see us attack some of those openings.”

Wygant was more disappointed offensively. The Colonels, who never led, turned it over 11 times in falling behind 23-17 at the half and they made just one 3-point attempt for the entire game. Jacob Medina’s eight points led the Colonels.

“Offensively, it was tough,” Wygant said. “That’s kind of the story right now. We turned the ball over too much tonight. When we didn’t turn the basketball over I think we got some decent shots. This is probably the second or third game in a row where we haven’t been able to hit an outside shot which doesn’t make the defense honest. They were inside the 3-point line the entire time.

“Our decision making wasn’t very good tonight and that’s not really the issue we’ve had all year.”

Everybody in the district will now be chasing the Pioneers over the second half of the district schedule.

“I don’t like to think about that,” Grubbs said. “It’s nice that we’re 6-0 right now, but the mentality has to be to get to 14-0. We going to focus to get 1-0 against Kettle Run on Tuesday. It’s back to work and hopefully we can get that next win and continue to put the pressure on everyone else.”

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