Eagles 'D' smothers Colonels

December 21, 2010

By Mark Sawyer
Special to The Winchester Star       

WINCHESTER- Last week, the Hedgesville (W.Va.) boys' basketball team allowed only 29 points in a win over Sherando.

Through three quarters Monday night, the Eagles looked like they might beat that defensive performance at James Wood.

Although the Eagles surrendered 20 fourth quarter points, they still rolled to an impressive 71-41 non-district road victory over the Colonels at Donald H. Shirley Gymnasium.

Hedgesville (5-0) scored the first eight points of the game and never looked back. Five different Eagles knocked down a 3-pointer, as the team finished with nine makes from behind the arc.

Facing a stingy Hedgesville defense, the Colonels didn't get on the board until Chris Skinner hit a layup with 3:47 left in the first period.

Eagles senior Lukas Conner answered with an old-fashioned three-point play to make it 11-2, and he was just getting started.

After Wood's Tyler Murphy made a pair of free throws, Conner got hot from long range. He buried two consecutive 3-pointers to make it 17-4, and for good measure he finished the quarter by beating the buzzer with another 3-pointer to make it 22-7.

Hedgesville connected on 5 of 9 3-point attempts in the period, and Conner scored 12 of his game-high 17 points..

James Wood (1-3) could never recover, as the Colonels didn't crack double figures in any quarter until the fourth. "We were just outplayed in the first three quarters in every aspect of a basketball game," James Wood coach Al Smith said. "Execution, defensively, effort, rebounding - you name it, we have a laundry list. We just got outplayed. They have a very well coached basketball team, and they gave great effort."

James Wood's 25-point halftime deficit reached 36 after three quarters.

Hedgesville had four different players score in double figures, while the Colonels' starting five finished with a combined 10 points.

"We had a lot of positives," Eagles coach Kelly Church said. "It's good for us, gives us a chance to play a lot of young kids. The biggest thing that I was pleased with was our defensive effort, and I thought we did a really, really good job of playing unselfish basketball.

"I'm extremely pleased. We had 21 assists and just 11 turnovers, and that's a pretty good statistic."

The Colonels trailed by as much as 37 in the fourth quarter (61-24), but Wood closed the gap by outscoring the Eagles 20-14 over the final eight minutes. Darion Hardware knocked down a pair of 3-pointers, and Jake Lewin added another in the period.

"We did finally come through in the last five minutes with the effort we needed to have on the defensive end," Smith said. "Hopefully we'll learn a little bit from this one and move on to the next one."

Phillip Largent scored 13 points for Hedgesville, which also got 12 from Quetin Peterson and 11 from Aaron Sutton. Peterson added eight assists and eight rebounds.

James Wood was led by Hardware's 10 points off the bench. Lewin added six.