Gallery by Heather Belcher
Charleston – On a day where James Monroe’s boys basketball team struggled to put the ball in the bucket early its defense did the heavy lifting.
The Mavericks forced 18 Clay-Battelle turnovers in the first half of Friday’s Class A semifinal, notching a 76-47 win over the CeeBees in the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
With the win James Monroe, the defending Class A champion, advances to Saturday’s Class A title game where it will face No. 3 Tucker County.
After a quarter the Mavericks had only hit on 5 of their 18 shots despite numerous open looks from beyond the arc and several others around the basket.
But their defense, which held Clay-Battelle without a point and field goal for nearly eight minutes across the first two quarters, answered the bell.
In total the Mavericks broke the record for most steals in a Class A tournament game with 23 while Collin Fox broke the individual mark of eight steals with 10. It culminated in a 30-turnover performance for the Cee-Bees, also a Class A record.
Those efforts helped the Mavericks get their offense rolling as they shot 9 of 17 from the field in the second quarter with 15 points of their first-half points coming off of turnovers.
“Tonight, offensively in the first half, especially the first quarter, we struggled just a little bit,” James Monroe head coach Matt Sauvage said. “And not necessarily turnovers or decisions, just hitting shots. We just weren’t putting the ball where it needed to be. Thankfully we settled in there a little bit and were able to do much better in the second quarter but especially the third and the fourth there. We were able to really settle in there and play. The good thing is if they continue to play defense like that the offense can be off a little and they can still be okay.”
Despite taking a 7-2 lead early, a 3 of 13 shooting performance in the first five minutes hurt the Mavs as the CeeBess scored on layups from Preston Luzader and Carson Shriver, capping a 6-0 run with a jumper from Luzader. The spurt gave Clay-Battelle an 8-7 advantage at the 4:02 mark. The CeeBees didn’t score again until the 4:32 mark of the second quarter.
That allowed the Mavericks to slowly gather themselves with an 11-0 run that featured four points from Eli Allen and five from Owen Jackson. By the point Kohlton St. Clair snapped the skid for the CeeBees with a 3, the Mavericks were already out of their funk.
A pair of layups from Jackson and Allen prompted a Clay-Battelle timeout. Fifty seconds later the CeeBees needed another one following a 3 from Fox and a tip-in from Juan Hopkins that made it a 29-13 game in favor of the Mavs.
Allen and Jackson took the closing honors of the half with a layup and a 3, respectively, to make it a 34-15 game in favor of James Monroe at the break.
Jackson finished the half with nine points and scored 16 in total, second on the team to Allen’s 26.
“He shot 7 of 10 today,” Clay-Battelle head coach Josh Kiser said. “He was one of the guys we were looking to give help off of and he stepped his game up big time for James Monroe today. He hit two big 3-pointers down there and ended ups with 16 points.”
“They were all on (Allen, Fox and Josh Burks) and I just went to the right spots,” Jackson said. “I knew they were going to be targeting the Big 3, I guess you would call it. I came in and hit a couple shots.”
Burks nailed a pair of 3s in the third quarter and Fox added another, keying an 53-percent shooting frame for the Mavericks in which they outscored the CeeBees 20-16, to effectively end the game and send the Mavericks to a Saturday showdown with Tucker County.
The two teams played once this season, a 63-54 James Monroe win on Jan. 13 at Tyler-Consolidated.
“I expect Tucker to come in fired up ready to play,” Sauvage said. “It’s the state championship game. I don’t think they’re going to look at the January game and think, ‘I think we’ll just lay down tonight.’ I think it’s going to be a great game. Tucker brings a lot of physicality. But you know, I tell people we may not be as big as other teams in certain positions but we’re just as physical as any team we play.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
