Boys' Basketball - James Wood completes sweep of Sherando

WINCHESTER — Friday night’s Frederick County rivalry game featured two teams going in opposite directions.

After only winning one game last season, James Wood has turned the corner and finds itself in the top half of the Class 4 Northwestern District standings and riding a three-game winning streak. On the other hand, Sherando was searching for answers in the midst of a seven game-losing streak and is in last place in the district.

On Friday, James Wood scored the first eight points of the game and never trailed rolling to a 58-38 victory and a season sweep of the Warriors at Shirley Gymnasium.

“Right now we’re playing well, we’ve won a couple of games in a row and it was nice to have one not come down to the wire,” said James Wood coach Tim Wygant, whose club had won its previous two games in the final second. “Give Sherando a ton of credit. They fought to the very end. Defensively they’re good. We made a lot of shots tonight. We play well when our defense plays well and our defense was very sound in the first quarter, actually the entire game. The first three quarters when we were able to build that lead we were very sound.”

“I think we were able to frustrate them offensively,” Wygant added. “They are very well coached team, a very skilled team. Our guys play for each other, and they’re playing with a lot of confidence right now and that comes from them playing for each other. They are one of the most passionate, unselfish teams I’ve had.”

James Wood (11-4, 6-2) jumped out to a quick 8-0 lead on the strength of two 3-point plays from junior Jacob Medina sandwiched around a short jumper by sophomore Jaden Ashby.

Sherando (3-13, 1-8) got on the board when junior Keli Lawson scored in the lane with 3:10 left in the first. Sophomore Dylan Rodeffer drilled a 3-pointer with just under two minutes left in the frame to pull the Warriors back to within 8-5.

Senior Jerome McCarthy scored five straight for Wood pushing the lead back to 13-5 and the Colonels held a 13-8 lead after the first period of play.

The Colonels opened the second quarter with a 13-3 run pushing the lead to 15 on junior Elijah Boggs’ 3-point play. His free throw with 1:35 left in the half made it 26-11, James Wood’s biggest lead of the first half.

Over the last 1:20 of the first half the Warriors went on a 5-0 run to get back to within 26-16 at the break giving hopes of a second half comeback.

Medina scored 10 of his game-high 18 points in the third quarter, hitting two of James Wood’s four 3-pointers in the frame and the Colonels outscored Sherando 23-12 extending the lead and putting to rest any hopes of a Warriors second-half comeback.

James Wood blew the game open with an 18-7 run to open the second half pushing the lead to 44-23 with 1:23 left in the third. The Colonels enjoyed a 49-28 advantage after three periods of play.

“When you have a season like last year the wins mean so much to the kids,” Wygant said. “They 100 percent deserve the credit for how hard they’ve worked throughout the entire offseason and up to this point in the season. The last three games we’ve had three different leading scorers. We just have kids step up and it’s very impressive and these kids are relishing and enjoying it. We are just taking it one game at a time.”

Sherando actually outscored the Colonels 10-9 over the last eight minutes of play.

After Wood scored the first six points of the fourth for its biggest lead of the night (55-28), the Warriors rebounded and finished the contest on a 10-3 run for the final tally of 58-38.

“It’s been tough. I haven’t had a season like this in a long time,” Sherando coach Garland Williams said. “It’s just snowballing in the wrong way. We’ve tried some different defenses and offenses trying to get things going but it’s been tough.

“We can’t say the young guys anymore because we’ve three quarters of the season so that’s out the window,” William added. “James Wood did a good job of knocking down their shots, they did a good job of running their offense and we didn’t in all those things. We’ll keep going, we’ll keep coming back and hope the tide will turn and get us feeling better about ourselves and things will start rolling. We work on all these things every practice but right now we feel it might be a mental thing so we have to fix that.”

McCarthy added 10 points and Lavaughan Freeman netted eight for the Colonels. Lawson led the Warriors with 16 points and Cole Armel added seven.

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