Sherando boys avenge district loss to James Wood

STEPHENS CITY — The Sherando boys’ basketball team had plenty of reasons to want to beat James Wood on Friday night.

The Colonels had pinned the only Class 4 Northwestern District loss on the Warriors this season, who were looking to maintain their position atop the standings.

It was Senior Night for several Sherando players.

Coach Garland Williams had promised to cancel a Saturday practice with a win.

Even with all of those reasons, senior Lazare Adingono had one more of a personal nature. And the 6-foot-4 forward played like it. Adingono scored a season-high 18 points as the Warriors took control over the final 19 minutes for a 65-34 romp.

Adingono, who was joined in double figures by Kellen Tyson (13) and Trey Williams (13), said the game had special meaning for him.

For the first time ever, his mother Maureen attended one of his games, along with his brother Theo, who Lazare said has severe autism. His sister Lydie, who also has the same condition as Theo, wasn’t able to attend, but the night was special for Lazare.

“I know it was Senior Night, but that game was for my family and my mom,” Adingono said. “She does everything. She’s a single mother.”

Adingono and his teammates certainly wanted to gain a measure of revenge against the Colonels, who had knocked off the Warriors 51-48 way back on Dec. 8.

“We lost that one the first game of the season, so we worked to improve,” Trey Williams said. “We kept it in the back of our mind and we knew we had to come back and beat them this time.”

“This game tonight was the most important one, just to get even with them, Adingono said. “We came out and showed them what we could do.”

The Warriors (13-5, 8-1) raced out of the blocks by scoring the game’s first nine points. Thanks to eight points from Ashton Kees, the Colonels were able to get to within 16-10, but Williams drilled a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give the Warriors a 19-10 lead after a quarter.

James Wood had an answer to start the second quarter. Three-pointers from Kemper Omps, Ben Tollok and Andrew Waters keyed a 15-4 run. Kees’ turnaround in the lane capped the surge which gave the Colonels a 25-23 lead with 2:54 left in the quarter.

But Adingono had two baskets to trigger a 10-0 run, that was capped by back-to-back buckets from Trey Williams, including another at the buzzer to give the Warriors a 33-25 halftime lead.

“I felt like we took their best punch in the first quarter.” James Wood coach Tim Wygant said. “They got out to a good jump and Trey hit that shot at the end of the first quarter. We were able to fight back and get the lead, but they went on that 10-0 run to finish off the second quarter.”

“We got back into our flow and the guys did a good job of responding to that,” Garland Williams said of the turnaround.

And the Warriors kept pouring it on from there. Led by six points from Adingono, they outscored the Colonels 20-6 in the third period. Trey Williams had three beautiful assists in the period and nailed a 3-pointer.

“Trey, he makes everyone better around him,” Adingono said. “The passes that he had to me were great.”

Kees scored all of James Wood’s points in the quarter, but the Colonels (9-8, 5-4) couldn’t buy a perimeter shot like the ones that keyed their second quarter run.

“We’re going to go back and look at the film and see a lot of shots from 18 to 22 feet that we need to be able to hit,” Wygant said. “I think it was pretty clear after we went inside early their plan was to double the post and make us kick it out. I think we did decent job of getting quality shots from the outside and they didn’t go in.

“We hit a couple in the second quarter,” he added. “You’ve got to make them pay sometimes. They did it to us. Obviously, they like to get the ball in to Kellen and Lazare, but when we got the opportunity to make them push it to the outside, they had some guys hit some shots.”

After Jared Neal’s 3-pointer for James Wood in the fourth quarter, the Warriors scored the final 12 points to close out the game. Adingono had three baskets, including two off of offensive boards.

“Coach has been telling me all season, I’ve got to pick it up,” Adingono said. “Offensive points and second chance points are huge. Tonight, that’s definitely what fueled us.”

Tyson dominated the defensive glass and finished with 13 rebounds.

“Kellen did a monster job on the boards tonight for us and that was great to see,” Garland Williams said. “Lazare did a great job finishing around the bucket.”

In addition to all of the other important reasons, Friday’s win confirmed for the Warriors that they are making strides as the playoffs loom. Gavyn Blye (6 points), Jacob Brown (6) and Drew Tyson (5) also provided solid offense.

“The more we get into the season and the more we practice and keep working on things we need to get better at, it’s just repetition now,” Trey Williams said. “We’re getting prepared for the playoffs. We keep taking one game at a time and you can’t make the playoffs if you keep losing games.”

Garland Williams said every win is important down the stretch for his defending district tournament champs. “Down the road we have three more league games and those are important because everybody is jockeying for position,” he said. “We have a position that we want to keep.”

Wygant said believes his resilient club can rebound from a cold shooting night. “We’re going to get in the gym and really focus on putting the ball into the basket, specifically some jump shots and hopefully we’ll be able to clean it up pretty quickly. … We’ve got good shooters. We just didn’t shoot well tonight.”

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