WINCHESTER — After coming in with two straight impressive wins, the James Wood High School girls’ basketball team came up three points short of a trifecta on Monday night at Shirley Gymnasium.
The Colonels made a late push but never led in a 36-34 defeat to Liberty. The Eagles (4-16) completed a season sweep.
James Wood (4-18) never had a chance to tie the game or take the lead after falling behind 7-0. But Ashlyn Evans’ 3-pointer with 1.5 seconds to complete the scoring was part of a strong 23-point fourth quarter in which the Colonels nearly wiped out an 11-point deficit.
“I was proud of the girls,” said James Wood first-year head coach Joe Hall, whose team beat Manassas Park 56-15 on Thursday and Warren County 40-25 on Friday. “They fought back after being down the whole game. They made it an interesting game.
“Liberty, they have a solid squad. They were able to dictate the pace of the game in moments where we needed to play a little bit faster.”
Despite playing the first quarter without their leader in scoring, rebounding and steals in Dayana Jackson (six points Monday) as well as Evans (seven points), James Wood only found itself trailing 7-4 after eight minutes. (Hall would not comment on why neither player participated in the first quarter.) The Colonels scored all their points in the period on offensive rebounds by Lillian Harlow, who came down with two air balls underneath the basket and quickly put the ball back up.
Jackson took the floor at the start of the second quarter but picked up her second foul with 6:21 to go in the period and sat the remainder of the half.
The Colonels would miss their first 12 shots of the period before Evans shot a ball off the glass and in with 9.9 seconds left in the half to cut James Wood’s deficit to 18-9. Liberty only made 4 of 13 field goal attempts in extending its lead by six points.
For a long time, neither team made a basket in the third quarter. James Wood missed two uncontested layups on fast breaks while going 0-for-11 from the floor, with one free throw each by Malise Olah and Jackson cutting the Colonels’ deficit to 18-11. Liberty’s Leah Tibbs (game-high 13 points) used the glass twice in the paint in the final 1:08 of the quarter to give the Eagles a 22-11 lead.
“We had trouble making our layups and converting our free throws,” said Hall, whose team made 8 of 15 attempts at the line for the game.
With the score 23-13, James Wood senior Aubrey Nail (team-high nine points) led a Colonels’ charge in the final home game of her career.
Hailey Harlow grabbed an offensive rebound and kicked the ball out to Nail in the right corner for a 3-pointer with 6:56 left.
Hailey Harlow created a turnover on the next possession by standing her ground when Liberty’s Ivy Cavins drove into her. The ball popped into the air, Harlow grabbed it, and fired ahead to Nail. Nail finished the fast-break opportunity while being fouled, then hit the ensuing free throw with 6:38 left.
Nail then completed a personal 8-0 run after Jackson stole the ball. She passed ahead to Nail, who scored on a layup to make it 23-21 with 5:52 left in the game.
“We just worked together as a team more in the fourth quarter than we did [before],” Nail said.
The teams traded baskets on the next three possessions — a Tibbs 3-pointer, a Jackson 3, then a Brooklyn Bunch bank shot after Katie Crile grabbed an offensive rebound on the baseline and passed the ball to Bunch as she was falling out of bounds. That basket made it 28-24 Liberty.
The game remained scoreless for almost three minutes until Liberty’s Kenzie Bell started a stretch in which she scored seven of her 12 points in the final 2:19. She made two free throws when she was fouled after grabbing an offensive rebound of her own shot, then had a field goal with 1:53 left for a 32-24 Liberty lead.
Jackson drove through the Eagles’ zone with 1:21 left and scored on a jumper in the paint, but she landed awkwardly. She was clearly in significant pain as she lay on her back, and she walked gingerly as she was helped off the court.
The Colonels had to adjust without Jackson, but they kept coming.
Lillian Harlow swished a high-arcing 3-pointer from the right wing to cut the Eagles’ lead to 32-29 with 45 seconds left.
Down 33-29, Liilian Harlow was fouled on a layup attempt and made two free throws to make it 33-31 with 23.3 seconds remaining.
James Wood sent Bell to the line with 20.7 seconds left. She made the first free throw and missed the second, but she grabbed the rebound. The Eagles outrebounded the Colonels 37-27 over the last three quarters and had six offensive boards in the fourth.
James Wood was forced to foul Bell again, and with 15.5 seconds left, she made both free throws for a 36-31 lead. The Colonels were unable to get a shot off until Evans’ 3, and the clock ran out after the make.
James Wood will play Manassas Park on the road on Tuesday to draw its season to a close. The Colonels had to deal with several injuries over the course of the season, but James Wood feels it made progress.
For example, James Wood lost to Warren County the first time it played the Wildcats, and Hall said the Colonels’ 44-35 loss to the Eagles in Bealeton on Dec. 19 was not as close as the score indicated in the game, noting it took a late flurry of points to get to that score.
“From our first game to now, we definitely showed improvement, especially with shooting,” Nail said.
Nail is one of three seniors on a 13-girl roster, and Hall hopes the players coming back will continue to grow.
“A lot of it is getting the younger players to understand that every possession counts in a basketball game,” said Hall, whose team had only one turnover in the fourth quarter but had 16 in the first three periods Monday, including one on each of its first four possessions. “I can’t count how many times where we had someone open, or we threw a pass and it ended up going out of bounds, or we dribbled it off our foot. We really have to work on the turnover bug.”
Hall said Nail and fellow seniors Kooper Hall and Reagan Hicks did a lot for the program.
“We have a great group of seniors,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for anything more from them. They all came to practice and worked their butt off. They’re going to be sorely missed. For my first year, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of seniors.”
Nail — the daughter of former James Wood baseball, basketball and cross country athlete “Rusty” Nail — said she definitely appreciated playing basketball for the Colonels.
“I was on varsity my freshman year, so that was my first varsity sport here,” Nail said. “It meant a lot to me.”
— Contact Robert Niedzwiecki at rniedzwiecki@winchesterstar.com
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